Ask HN: How will all these open source companies succeed?

5 points by KennyFromIT 3 years ago | 1 comment

As a casual observer of HN it feels like there's an uptick in open source projects that aim to become companies. This is obviously a customer acquisition strategy, but I'm struggling to think through the long-term implications of this pattern on the market as a whole. What does this mean for customers/users of the projects? What does it mean for the companies? Their employees?

I have a hunch that many of them will go out of business the moment they are asked (by their investors) to start thinking of how to generate revenue. At the same time, I recognize that I could have blindspots that prevent me from understanding something that will make them all work. Am I missing something?

version_five 3 years ago |

I think many of the founder & vc bets are on being acquired by a big company.

There's also lots of room for cloud versions and consulting or customization services to add value on top of open source, though it's not always clear that the company running the open source project is in the best position to do that.

Personally, I worry about companies that get funding to try and non-specifically monetize open source, because I think it can be a negative influence on decisions made for the project.