Open source leaders share their insights and key tips
The past few years have marked the maturity of the open source software (OSS) era, as attitudes from proprietary software vendors shift, large IPOs and acquisitions emphasize commercial potential, and the developer community expands far beyond traditional tech hub.
Not too long ago, people thought it was possible to build a multi-billion dollar company with open source at its core, a highly contrarian investment. Decisive changes came with the acquisitions of Red Hat and GitHub, the IPOs of Elastic, Cloudera, and MongoDB, and the massive funding rounds of many more open source-based companies. These economic events reflect a surge in grassroots activity: In 2019 alone, more than 1.3 million first-time contributors joined open source communities, and 30% of projects on GitHub are newly created.
As we've written before, the growth of these companies reflects a combination of factors driving open source adoption in enterprises: significant advantages related to cost, community, and control. The growing influence and stature of developers means that most businesses now acknowledge the need to have an open source product and strategy.
As the popularity and credibility of open source software increases, it also expands its footprint within organizations and moves up the IT technology stack. Starting with infrastructure and database solutions, mainstream operating systems now span everything from API management to enterprise automation, commerce, collaboration, CMS, and design.
The result was a Cambrian explosion of OSS startups across the application stack. As a long-term investor in this space, Accel decided to chart its progress by creating Open100. Open100 brings together fast-growing start-ups of significance in the open source space, measured by community growth, business evolution, and innovative approaches driving OSS adoption in new markets. From the most well-known companies to those bringing open source into new verticals, Open100 reflects the number and breadth of startups commercializing the growing open source movement.
Open100
We recently previewed Open100 at Open Source Connect, a virtual event on Hopin that brings together founders and experts to discuss the past, present, and future of OSS. In discussions led by Snyk, Rasa, Confluent, Sentry, Segment, and Vercel, we explored some of open source's unique business-building challenges—the tension between commercialization and community building, the specific needs of sales and marketing, and The need to foster community without its control.
You can rewatch our panel discussions, Commercialization and Scaling, Community and Licensing, and Open Source: Past, Present, and Future, where some key insights and lessons emerged.
Treat projects like products
Sentry founder and CTO David Cramer, who originally created the project to solve problems while working on Disqus, advises open source developers to work with corporate support whenever possible. "All open source should probably start in-house because there is value in doing so, not purely academic.
"I worked on Disqus for over three years and iterated on later Sentry in my spare time - it really lets you work like a product manager, working with internal customers and external communities to polish and mature the project. "
Segment co-founder and CTO Calvin French-Owen agrees. "Sometimes people start something because they think it's a fun science project. It's very different than when you start something because you really want to use it."
This (product-focused) approach reflects increased professionalization of open source, as the number of developers and projects has grown rapidly in recent years. "Open source has changed dramatically, and people now consider what is the minimum acceptable level for a project," says Armin Ronacher, director of engineering at Sentry. "It used to be common to just have some source code on an FTP server, but now you need a There's source code on GitHub, a ReadMe license, it must have a CI setup, it must have a code of conduct and a way to get feedback. "
The same goes for marketing. Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch emphasized that the company strives to ensure a balance between its open source and enterprise offerings. "It is extremely important that our marketing documentation and support for Next.js speak the same caliber as our platform offerings. When we announce a new feature for an open source project or communicate our roadmap, we give it the same caliber as any other The same attention that comes with commercial product releases -- including the transparency you'd expect from an open source project."
Balance the relationship between community and commercialization
For most open source software startups, there is a community long before there is a company. "Community is critical, especially when you want to build an audience early on," said GC Lionetti, Confluent's chief marketing officer. "Confluent's journey began almost five years before we became a real company. If you think about that ethos and context, it's important to respect and harness the energy of the community, while also contributing and giving back.
In practice, he suggested, that means making sure there are people who are directly responsible for community management. "Make sure you have a voice in the company that really agrees with the community, because it keeps you honest and keeps you true to the community you've built."
Snyk takes a similar approach, with Snyk co-founder and president Guy Podjarny saying: "We make sure there are people in the company who don't care about commercialization. Their whole mindset is to make the community thrive".
Open source software companies must deal with the natural friction between doing what's best for users and the imperative of commercialization as they continue to nurture the community of open source projects that have helped their products. "It's a very real tension," said Kasey Byrne, Rasa's vice president of marketing. "As head of marketing, I have two good friends, one head of sales and one head of developer relations. They don't always like each other, it's just structurally true in a company like ours, and commercial and an ongoing source of appropriate communication and dialogue between the open source project community."
Guy Podjarny agrees: "The challenge we face every day is that when developers are both buyers and users, you say to every user in the community 'on the one hand I want you to be successful, on the other hand I want You buy'. There's always some trade-offs involved."
Thinking Beyond Sales and Customers
This duality between users and customers means that open source software companies must think extensively about commercialization and be willing to take indirect routes to sales.
“Our goal is co-creation, not necessarily sales,” says Kathy Byrne. “Sales come from co-creation. When communicating with a community, it is easier to structure stories with the goal of co-creation. "
GC Lionetti suggested that companies must acknowledge the unique nature of the open source user journey. "The mistake people make is to define when a user enters the funnel from a commercial perspective. In open source, users tend to have already gone through a 6-12 month learning and building journey with the company. Don't just go to the movies Last 15 minutes, pay attention to what's ahead."
He suggested that sales need to be complex and multi-layered when the typical customer is a developer. "You usually tend to push people to sell, but developers don't inherently want to talk to anyone; they'd rather read your docs and go down the learning path. Prepare more tools of persuasion than jump straight to Commercialize. Ultimately, if you have the right product and the right learning path, the customer will pay."
dare to say "no"
While community is important to every open source software project or company, it cannot be allowed to dictate its direction. "My take is that some of the best open source software ends up saying no to the community," Calvin French-Owen said. "It's easy to let a small, focused project bloat in feature scope unless the people maintaining it can provide a strong perspective."
Referring to the approach of the team behind Go, he pointed to the need for a disciplined response to community requests. "You need a way to create APIs where people can build anything they want outside of the API, but when it comes to the core functionality of the product, you need a strong point of view to deliver the best product possible."
David Cramer also warns against trying to cater to all developers. "Over time, as Sentry grew and we became more successful, we decided we no longer supported anything the community wanted; we only supported what we used. We removed support for Oracle Database and MySQL Support because it doesn't make sense: we're not doing a good job of maintaining it, and neither is the open source community. If you ship a bad product, it's not going to be a good experience for anyone.
Thanks to Armin, Calvin, David, GC, Guillermo, Guy, and Kasey for their time and insights.
-- Andrei, Arun, Dan, Vas, Adrian, David, Varun, and Christine, Accel Open Source Team.
/// About the author ///
Reprint | Open Source Rainforest
Translation | Liu Tiandong
Editor | Luo Ruiyan
Disclaimer: This article is the Chinese translation of the article "The Future of Open Source: Launching the Open100" by Andrei Brasoveanu, Arun Mathew, Daniel Levine, Vas Natarajan, David Waltcher, Varun Purandare, Adrian Colyer, Christine Esserman.
Original link:
https://www.accel.com/noteworthy/the-future-of-open-source-launching-the-open100
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