OSCON talk about business and my perspectives on the advantages and disadvantages building business around open source software.

1. Unicorns,
Dragons,
Open Source Business Models
And Other Mythical Creatures
Andrew Clay Shafer
OSCON 2014
@littleidea

2. @littleidea

3. this guy

5. disclaimer
a school of thought

6. buckle up
keep your arms and legs
inside the ride at all times
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spatch/4630771984/

7. three stone cutters walk
into a Pareto Inefficient
Nash Equilibrium

8. this talk is for me

9. Makers

10. Business Guy

11. this talk is for you
…hopefully

12. I changed this talk to
protect the innocent.

13. how many of you pay rent?
mortgage?
fun?
food?

15. in conclusion
convince people to give you more
money in exchange for something
that costs you less than said money
rinse and repeat

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

17. let’s rewind that

18. I don’t love computers

19. I love maths

20. I love learning

21. I love games

22. I love puzzles

23. I love people

24. I want to have nice things

25. I want people to have nice things

26. one way to get nice things is $$

27. one way to get $$ is software

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

29. Open Source is Big Business

30. recognize privilege

31. let’s get a few things out of the way

32. you will NOT be the RedHat of X

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

34. you cannot exchange downloads

35. more context about me

36. I was born

37. Fur Trading formative years

38. Washing Cars

39. One Bright Day

40. I studied math on a debate scholarship

41. Worlds Colliding

43. mistakes were made

44. disregarding ‘business’

45. –George Bernard Shaw
“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs
of his tribe are the laws of nature!”

46. ssh
BASH
TCP/IP
LAN lun
ACL
HTTP
SANTLS
git
haskell functional
OOP
scala
go

47. EBITA
NPVP&L RFP
IRR
IPO
Margin
ROI
Profit
M&A

48. community != business

49. undervaluing the solution
value is created

50. not allowing people to pay
value is captured

51. not managing expectations

52. not respecting relationships

53. not recognizing opportunities

54. not scaling/scaling too much

55. none of that was specific to
open source…

56. but open source has unique
advantages

57. inverted information
asymmetry

58. authenticity

59. existing relationships

60. obvious leads

61. internal champions

62. open source also has
unique disadvantages

63. inverted information
asymmetry

64. at odds with the community

65. no one likes to be sold

66. tragedy of the commons

67. the user is not the buyer

68. finally…

69. choose your own adventure

70. make the choice explicit

71. make great software

72. make great money

73. have nice things

74. don’t limit yourself

75. don’t limit us

76. and they
all lived
happily
ever after

77. come at me
@littleideaOSCON 2014