8 lessons learned from a 3-dimensional framework for understanding how to turn your open-source project into the next WordPress or Linux. (Image by Sven Balnojan, on basis of the photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash) “Open Source projects exhibit natural increasing returns to scale. That’s because most developers are interested in using and participating in the largest projects, and the projects with the most developers are more likely to quickly fix bugs, add features and work reliably across the largest number of platforms. So, tracking the projects with the highest developer velocity can help illuminate promising areas in which to get […]
COSS: 7 Models to Develop & Price Open-Core Products
How a commercial open-source software company should develop & price open-core products to fight the hyper-cloud “service-wrappers”. (Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash; Are you still open for contributions?) Dbt Labs, formerly Fishtown Analytics, recently did a large Series C. In the announcement blog post, Tristan Handy, CEO of dbt Labs outlined the major risk he currently sees for open-core products like the one dbt Labs sells: commoditization by the hyper-clouds. Turns out, Sid Sijbrandji, CEO of GitLab, also a company selling an open-core product, thinks very much alike. He has a thorough analysis of how an open-core product can […]