Comments on: Mixing Open Source & Business – my take

By: SteveStreeting.com » Blog Archive » This would never happen on my watch

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:08:22 +0000

[...] talked about business models and open source before, and that it can be necessary for companies like mine to mix in some proprietary aspects [...]

By: SteveStreeting.com » Blog Archive » Great video on making money as a startup

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:45:01 +0000

[...] to all kinds of product. It also dovetails in nicely with what I was saying a few days ago about open source and business, in that there are similar arguments about not believing the hype we’re often sold by [...]

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:24:11 +0000

Thanks for the suggestion, but not really feasible at this point. We’d need the approval of all contributors and I doubt we’d get it. In any case, OGRE’s popularity was based on being open to use in more situations than GPL allowed, I do think that LGPL is a pretty good balance for a library. A full application would be something different though.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:54:50 +0000

Trolltech seems to be a commercial company that has a successful business model based on an open-source software library. There is however a difference between: Qt is dual licensed using the GPL, whilst Ogre is dual licensed using the LGPL.

May I be so bold as to suggest that a possible solution would be to change Ogre to GPL? Such a change would clearly be temporarily unpopular by a large group of people (look what happened when the ExtJS team moved from LGPL to GPL), but it would ensure that closed-source professional users of Ogre would need to pay to use it.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:34:12 +0000

I agree, and I actually started one of these but I was way too ambitious. I had what I still think is a great idea for a new way of designing levels, but I had some serious problems with the implementation, partly because it was so different, and it was just becoming like quicksand. If I go back to that subject, and I may do, I will aim at a more tried and tested kind of target initially and save the revolution for later

You’ll actually find the core structure to that editor as open source now, minus all the bonkers things I was trying to do with it.

By: przem

przem — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:26:12 +0000

Dear Steve,

I think that a GUI editor for ogre scenes or projects in general , would be a great commercial offering.
Something along the lines of now-dead ‘Visual Ogre Studio’. Perhaps with C++ project generator. Hope you get the idea.

I am sure that such product would be a huge winner:
1. It would come from you, recognized, trusted Ogre project leader
2. It could be more intimately tied with Ogre
3. It should be always up-to-date with newest Ogre versions
4. Unlike competition (visual.net and such ), this studio would not require .NET to be used with finished products

A great free library and commercial editor to get thing going quickly – each driving each other’s progress. Sounds like a killer to me. I want it already.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:43:06 +0000

Right now 100% of the donations go into funding the site costs – it’s running on a dedicated server with support backup which means it’s more reliable than it used to be, particularly when I’m away. That all costs moolah There’s always a shortfall every month, my company makes that up. We’ve had a coupel of corporate donations, and those were used to buy test hardware.

Donations are great, but don’t expect them to support serious development, they’re simply not numerous enough for that.

Places like BountySource have tried to set up collective ways to fund development, but I don’t think it works that well. I do research on what people want all the time, and the answer I almost always get is that most want it, but aren’t willing to pay toward a developer’s salary for it if it goes into the core (corporations, that is).

It would be nice to think that enough people in the community would be able to reliably fund development of the core and add-ons, but seriously, don’t give up your day job on that dream, you may be on the street quite fast Realistically most of us will have to have other sources of income to fund our open source contributions, whether that’s selling other products, having a day job, etc.

Unless you work for Mozilla in which case you’re lucky. Google just renewed their multi-million dollar sponsorship for the next 3 years. It’s allright for some eh? There’s a top 0.01% of projects that get this kind of unilateral support, but most of us can only dream of it.

By: KungFooMasta

KungFooMasta — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:27:54 +0000

What about allowing funding for open source addons? For example, if people want X, you say it takes Y funds for you to work on it, and people pool together money to make it happen. Is this feasible? I’m probably ignorant on this, but right now I can see that people can donate money to Ogre, but do they know how that money is spent? Maybe if we did research on what people want, or how they want the lib extended, you can propose funds needed to focus on and implement X. Well, just an idea, I’m more likely to buy into that then the SpeedTree addon, but maybe its better to focus on people that have these needs, that are more serious about spending money for these tools.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:18:45 +0000

It means my company pays for the hardware & software I use to develop & test OGRE on, pays for the website (ads & donations cover only about 60% of the cost), and for example has paid for my ticket to Siggraph where I held an OGRE get-together in the past. Any time I need something for OGRE, my company usually makes up any funding shortfall. That’s what ‘underwriting’ means.

By: Karter

Karter — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:08:50 +0000

Nice article. Can you elaborate what you mean by:
Underwriting of costs for things like hardware & hosting for the community site, publicity at shows etc
?