Comment by jedberg
3 hours ago
I've worked at a DevTools company and been the CEO of one too. Here's my thoughts:
I agree that they need to be open source. But that makes it really hard to make a successful business. Sure, there are examples of success, but also many examples of successful open source tools never becoming successful companies.
The most famous example is Sendmail (where I worked way back in the day). They took millions in funding and ultimately sold to an infra company, returning pennies on the dollar to their investors.
The difficulty stems from the fact that your customers are developers and operators, and they all think that they don't need you because they are perfectly capable of running the software themselves and adding whatever they need to it. In a lot of cases they are right.
And now, with AI coders, it gets 10 times worse, because they can take your open source and then vibe code a "good enough" version of your commercial product.
I don't know how to square this circle. There are a lot of great dev tools made by people for free for the love of the game. But even those people need to eat.
Some tools have started making licenses that are free for individuals and startups but cost money for profitable companies. That's an interesting strategy but I know some companies won't allow those tools precisely because of their license.
> I don't know how to square this circle. There are a lot of great dev tools made by people for free for the love of the game. But even those people need to eat.
You really don't. If people can get something for free (effectively what OSS means to the average bear these days), they will, and they really don't care if the creator/maintainer can survive. And if that creator/maintainer doesn't, the logic boils down to "what's the replacement for <insert incumbent>?"
IMO, the combination of OSS and "generous free tier" SaaS plans basically nuked the willingness to pay for software, especially dev tools. Folks are just too conditioned to expect stuff to be cheap or free nowadays. Maybe that changes long-term but shrug, who knows.
> Some tools have started making licenses that are free for individuals and startups but cost money for profitable companies.
Ive seen this as well, but at a certain point it just seems like if your code is online, someones either taking it wholesale or recreating core pieces from the spec regardless of any licensing.
Its a tough time to be building OSS if you don't have distribution solved AKA some pedigree from the before times.
> Its a tough time to be building OSS if you don't have distribution solved AKA some pedigree from the before times.
I think this has always been true, but you're right, it's much more pronounced now.