Simple utility stuff I believe should fit in this category. Things like a text editor.
The profit comes from elsewhere, larger more complex systems.
Of course someone can TRY to profit off a text editor, but unless it solves complex enough problems (like a full blown IDE, but even then...).
The issue is there is intense demand for it, and ALSO easy supply. If someone attempts a profit driving rugpull, another will pop up in it's place.
I am still using Dendron because it meets my needs, but I'm always half tempted to replace it, and I'm fairly confident I could come up with something that meets my own needs in a day or two, and it would likely also be valuable to countless others. I just keep assuming that someone else will spend that day or two, and my pain points with Dendron are not that bad for me to spend the time.
How many text editors have you paid for, versus how many have you used for free?
I do think there is room for a few good paid text editors in the world, but most people won't pay directly for them, though they might use them if they are bundled ala Google Docs / O365 Word.
I am not a power user for Dendron, I mostly just use it for journaling, keeping track of who is who and what is what, and organizing architecture / ideas before they find a home somewhere else. Mostly a journal.
I do like that it’s in VS Code and I can leverage those tools and now, AI, to help.
The main functionality I use is the new daily journal from template feature. Do you use more surface area from it? What is the most useful features for you?
Feels like a lot of apps that launch these days have an open source core app and a subscription based platform.
The subscription based platform with automatic cloud hosting and other quality of life features, whatever those are depending on the app.
Although there's a bunch of 100% open source projects and developers that get enough donations to make it their full time job just off of that. Not that it's the way to go if you want to get rich, but it's still very much a real thing.
Do you not sponsor projects that you get value out of?
I'm not saying you have to, but you asked how they get compensated and there's nothing stopping you from giving them money.
It's easy to forget that you get a lot of value out of something and not give back. If you end up getting a good paying job with your programming experience just buy your favorite projects "a beer" one a month, or once a year. God knows it's better spent there all the subscriptions we have like Netflix or Spotify. Cheaper too.
Also, if the projects are big enough you can usually get tax credit. If you work at a decently sized company they also usually do some charity matching.
> Most people won't pay for something if they don't have to.
Sure, but most people don't need to. Only a small portion need to for the model to be viable. Scale is useful here.
It doesn't work because people that make $100k+ salaries wont buy their "friend" a beer. It's not failing because a bunch of poor people don't donate.
And it is viable because many things already operate this way. The most profitable ones have just convinced companies to donate. That shouldn't be required, but I'm not ignoring the reality.
Besides, this is a reality that is solvable simply by a small percentage of people going "you know what? I will donate". Not "everybody", just a very very small proportion. Let's take ripgrep as an example. Who knows how many people use this, but there's over 64k stars. Let's say 1% donate $5/mo. That's $3.2k/mo for burntsushi, I'm pretty sure he'd be happy with that. He's also a prolific HN user so maybe he'll even respond.
My point is that all it takes is a mental shift from a small number of people. This isn't some "we need huge collaboration therefore it'll never happen" type of thing, this is "I can take action and have meaningful impact today" type of thing.
And yet the majority of all computers dont just have some open source software, their operating systems are open source. The worlds digital infrastructure is largely open source.
Given the explosion of open source released projects I've seen over the past six months, I believe developers are getting compensated by the tool they are building for themselves creating real value for them.
I have a problem, I spend a few days building a tool that solves the problem, it works pretty well for me, and I release it to let others get value from it. They make tweaks to it, perhaps improve it, and I get value from those enhancements and bugfixes.
>but it feels like if this were an important question it would have halted OSS development decades ago
no because the people who maintain the nuts and bolts of the open source world, like the often individual or handful contributors to projects like ffmpeg or xz-utils have been passionately doing that and at times burning out (which in case of the latter caused pretty prominent problems).
Does the world look to you like it's in a state where important questions and problems don't go unanswered? The reason this stuff works is because there's random guys in a basement in Kentucky somewhere who thanklessly work their asses off and nobody cares. They simply keep doing it because half of the internet would fall apart otherwise.
Not all software needs to be for-profit.
Simple utility stuff I believe should fit in this category. Things like a text editor.
The profit comes from elsewhere, larger more complex systems.
Of course someone can TRY to profit off a text editor, but unless it solves complex enough problems (like a full blown IDE, but even then...).
The issue is there is intense demand for it, and ALSO easy supply. If someone attempts a profit driving rugpull, another will pop up in it's place.
I am still using Dendron because it meets my needs, but I'm always half tempted to replace it, and I'm fairly confident I could come up with something that meets my own needs in a day or two, and it would likely also be valuable to countless others. I just keep assuming that someone else will spend that day or two, and my pain points with Dendron are not that bad for me to spend the time.
A text editor with good UX is quite complex, I think it's hard to argue otherwise.
Most text-editors by large corporations don't even pass this bar.
How many text editors have you paid for, versus how many have you used for free?
I do think there is room for a few good paid text editors in the world, but most people won't pay directly for them, though they might use them if they are bundled ala Google Docs / O365 Word.
2 replies →
Hello, fellow Dendron user. I haven't found good-enough alternatives either.
Hm, maybe we should go make one.
I am not a power user for Dendron, I mostly just use it for journaling, keeping track of who is who and what is what, and organizing architecture / ideas before they find a home somewhere else. Mostly a journal.
I do like that it’s in VS Code and I can leverage those tools and now, AI, to help.
The main functionality I use is the new daily journal from template feature. Do you use more surface area from it? What is the most useful features for you?
Feels like a lot of apps that launch these days have an open source core app and a subscription based platform.
The subscription based platform with automatic cloud hosting and other quality of life features, whatever those are depending on the app.
Although there's a bunch of 100% open source projects and developers that get enough donations to make it their full time job just off of that. Not that it's the way to go if you want to get rich, but it's still very much a real thing.
Do you not sponsor projects that you get value out of?
I'm not saying you have to, but you asked how they get compensated and there's nothing stopping you from giving them money.
It's easy to forget that you get a lot of value out of something and not give back. If you end up getting a good paying job with your programming experience just buy your favorite projects "a beer" one a month, or once a year. God knows it's better spent there all the subscriptions we have like Netflix or Spotify. Cheaper too.
Also, if the projects are big enough you can usually get tax credit. If you work at a decently sized company they also usually do some charity matching.
Donationware is a viable business model for basically nobody.
Most people won't pay for something if they don't have to.
Sure, but most people don't need to. Only a small portion need to for the model to be viable. Scale is useful here.
It doesn't work because people that make $100k+ salaries wont buy their "friend" a beer. It's not failing because a bunch of poor people don't donate.
And it is viable because many things already operate this way. The most profitable ones have just convinced companies to donate. That shouldn't be required, but I'm not ignoring the reality.
Besides, this is a reality that is solvable simply by a small percentage of people going "you know what? I will donate". Not "everybody", just a very very small proportion. Let's take ripgrep as an example. Who knows how many people use this, but there's over 64k stars. Let's say 1% donate $5/mo. That's $3.2k/mo for burntsushi, I'm pretty sure he'd be happy with that. He's also a prolific HN user so maybe he'll even respond.
My point is that all it takes is a mental shift from a small number of people. This isn't some "we need huge collaboration therefore it'll never happen" type of thing, this is "I can take action and have meaningful impact today" type of thing.
And yet the majority of all computers dont just have some open source software, their operating systems are open source. The worlds digital infrastructure is largely open source.
2 replies →
How does Obsidian team get paid when the app is 100% free?
Now you have the answer.
That's yet to be decided :D
For the first time, I put a sponsorship button. Will see if it works.
Given the explosion of open source released projects I've seen over the past six months, I believe developers are getting compensated by the tool they are building for themselves creating real value for them.
I have a problem, I spend a few days building a tool that solves the problem, it works pretty well for me, and I release it to let others get value from it. They make tweaks to it, perhaps improve it, and I get value from those enhancements and bugfixes.
Obsidian has a number of full time employees who all want to eat and afford rent
> Obsidian has a number of full time employees who all want to eat and afford rent
They have lots of sponsors [1]; you can pay $4/month for sync service or $50 a year, per person for a commercial license.
[1]: https://obsidian.md/enterprise/
The burden of OSS is dealing with PRs that you don't want to merge. The drive by bug fixes don't compensate for that.
There is no obligation to maintain, no obligation to merge. Copyright is just that, copy right, it’s not an entitlement.
Free as in beer and free as in speech means those ‘contributors’ are also free as in Linus to go fork themselves.
Don’t like it? Go fork, yourself. Want it different? Pay, money, make, it, happen. Don’t like paying? Go fork, yourself, harder.
Are you asking how the open source ecosystem works in general?
In my experience, if the dev wishes to be compensated in dollars, they also sell a commercial license, cloud services, etc.
The same way they do now?
I don’t mean to be condescending but it feels like if this were an important question it would have halted OSS development decades ago.
But if the flip side (getting compensated) wasn't also an important concern then maybe far more software would be OSS in recent decades...
>but it feels like if this were an important question it would have halted OSS development decades ago
no because the people who maintain the nuts and bolts of the open source world, like the often individual or handful contributors to projects like ffmpeg or xz-utils have been passionately doing that and at times burning out (which in case of the latter caused pretty prominent problems).
Does the world look to you like it's in a state where important questions and problems don't go unanswered? The reason this stuff works is because there's random guys in a basement in Kentucky somewhere who thanklessly work their asses off and nobody cares. They simply keep doing it because half of the internet would fall apart otherwise.
get a job