How to build an open source business

Re:How to build an open source business by mrkramer on Saturday October 03, 2020 @12:50PM (#24673198)

I think the secret behind making open source profitable is bringing it to the enterprise level. At first I didn't believe you can make a lot of money with open source but after Red Hat got sold for $34 billion I changed my mind. Also GitHub getting sold for $7.5 billion is pretty impressive.

I recommend watching Bob Young's presentation "So You Want To Start an Open Source Company" on YouTube[1], he is the co-founder of Red Hat.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJVEAXlPadg

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Re:How to build an open source business by mattgreg on Saturday October 03, 2020 @01:06PM (#24673305)

Red Hat is both a great example, and a horrible one all wrapped up into one. They are the OG, but I'm very skeptical that a new project could take the Red Hat 2000s playbook and apply it in the 2020s.

Check out how Peter Levine talks about the 3 'eras' of OSS Companies. I elaborate here: https://www.ockam.io/learn/blog/zero_ipo/#peter-levine---par...

And there is a direct link to his perspective here https://a16z.com/2019/10/04/commercializing-open-source/

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Re:How to build an open source business by kubanczyk on Saturday October 03, 2020 @01:11PM (#24673343)

In short: (1) Free Software Era (2) Services&Support Era (3) SaaS Era.

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Re:How to build an open source business by rvnx on Saturday October 03, 2020 @03:18PM (#24674079)

GitHub is not open-source as far as I know, even pretty much the opposite isn't it ?

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Re:How to build an open source business by mrkramer on Sunday October 04, 2020 @05:02AM (#24677403)

I meant they used Git free and open-source software and made a big business out of it.

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