Unicorns, Dragons, Open Source Business Models And Other Mythical Creatures

Andrew Clay ShaferOSCON 2014

@littleidea

@littleidea

this guy

disclaimera school of thought

buckle upkeep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spatch/4630771984/

three stone cutters walk into a Pareto Inefficient Nash Equilibrium

this talk is for me

Makers

Business Guy

this talk is for you…hopefully

I changed this talk to protect the innocent.

how many of you pay rent?

mortgage?

fun?

food?

in conclusionconvince people to give you more money in exchange for something

that costs you less than said moneyrinse and repeat

if I was holding a mic…I would now drop it

let’s rewind that

I don’t love computers

I love maths

I love learning

I love games

I love puzzles

I love people

I want to have nice things

I want people to have nice things

one way to get nice things is $$

one way to get $$ is software

in case you lost the plot…software keeps eating the world

Open Source is Big Business

recognize privilege

let’s get a few things out of the way

you will NOT be the RedHat of X

many open source ‘exits’ were fundamentally not ‘businesses’

you cannot exchange downloads

more context about me

I was born

Fur Trading formative years

Washing Cars

One Bright Day

I studied math on a debate scholarship

Worlds Colliding

mistakes were made

disregarding ‘business’

–George Bernard Shaw

“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!”

sshBASH

TCP/IPLAN lun

ACL

HTTP

SANTLS

git

haskell functional

OOP

scalago

EBITA

NPVP&L RFP

IRR

IPOMargin

ROI

ProfitM&A

community != business

undervaluing the solution

value is created

not allowing people to pay

value is captured

not managing expectations

not respecting relationships

not recognizing opportunities

not scaling/scaling too much

none of that was specific to open source…

but open source has unique advantages

inverted information asymmetry

authenticity

existing relationships

obvious leads

internal champions

open source also has unique disadvantages

inverted information asymmetry

at odds with the community

no one likes to be sold

tragedy of the commons

the user is not the buyer

finally…

choose your own adventure

make the choice explicit

make great software

make great money

have nice things

don’t limit yourself

don’t limit us

and they all lived happily ever after

come at me

@littleideaOSCON 2014