Dan Lorenc’s Post

SELL THAT SHIT FOR MONEY! This talk from Adam Jacob is so good I’ve probably watched it 5 times now and sent it to everyone I know. Adam gives a literal masterclass on software business in 30 minutes that can probably take the place of a full MBA and breaks down concepts around growth, pricing, and most importantly open source strategy. It pains me over and over again at how many people and companies get this simple principle wrong at the start, and it’s so hard to fix later. You can be both open source and make money, and the solution is actually really simple - you just have to charge money for your product instead of giving it away for free. Huh? How can you charge money for open source? That’s the trick - you don’t. Your product isn’t the source code itself. If you get this wrong, you end up competing with yourself and frustrated that people won’t pay you for something that you’ve already told them costs $0. He also breaks down what happens when someone else takes your code (that you’ve given away) and tries to compete with you using it. This isn’t theoretical, he explains exactly how to position yourself, your project, and your product so that when this happens it actually benefits you. If you do anything in open source, please do yourself a massive favor and just watch this talk, preferably at least twice but my guess is you’ll do that on your own after the first watch. And if you decide not to watch, or watch and then ignore Adam’s advice, don’t be surprised when you realize no one will give you money for something you’ve decided they’re allowed to use for free. There is no OSS sustainability problem, somehow there’s an expectation problem that money will just appear out of nowhere for any project that gets enough GitHub stars. https://lnkd.in/eJByCG24 Huge thanks to Adam for putting this talk together! SELL THAT SHIT FOR MONEY!