http://ayende.comAyende @ RahienCopyright (C) Ayende Rahien 2004 - 2021 (c) 202660If you can have business on top of OSS, it's commercial, dot. http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment21http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment21Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:41:40 GMTAndrew, I don't believe that semi OSS would be a viable model, no. And I don't like the distinction between propriety and commercial, by and large, OSS is not commercial software. That is, it is not sold the same way that commercial software is sold. You can have business models on top of OSS, for sure, but they aren't the same http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment20http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment20Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:46:07 GMTI know, I'm just asking if it would make sense to be semi-open-source. BTW, on a side note: don't use the "commercial" term when you mean "proprietary", please. FLOSS can be commercial. http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment19http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment19Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:34:28 GMTAndreas, The model of having commercial tooling to support OSS is a fairly common one http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment18http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment18Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:05:54 GMTThanks for sharing. Anyway, it's a pity that such a great product (it seems) tied to an open source project, isn't open source. I know that it would be much harder to obtain revenue if you opensourced it, but, how about open sourcing really old versions? I mean, if you just released 2.0, opensource 1.0. After 1 year, you release 3.0 and opensource 2.0. This way: - You attract more "spare time" developers, which may end up buying the last version when they work for their "day job". - You get fixes for free that you can forward-port to your more bleeding edge versions. - Etc...? Regards! http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment17http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment17Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:56:41 GMT@Steve, One change I made after having to fold my company was to change my philosophy on success. Before, I quit my job and worked full time on a project that looked like it would be successful, and then an outside market force basically destroyed it. It was definitely heartbreaking and as a previously mentioned, severely damage a very good friendship as an added "bonus". So now I'm not looking to hit the home run anymore, because those simply require too much time and like you, I'm married, got a little rugrat and a mortgage to pay. Instead, I've turned myself into more a single hitter (for you baseball fans out there), and am now working on smaller projects involving just a few people who all share the same vision. It makes life so much easier when you know that feeding your family isn't tied to the success on those projects, instead any money made is gravy to go with my already very good salary. Unfortunately, that means I'll never make an NH Prof product (in terms of complexity), but I'm fine with that. http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment16http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment16Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:16:52 GMTTime will tell how successful it will be by what kind of ROI you get. I would be interested to see what kind of person-hours went into it out of your own pocket. (not counting your own.) I've got projects I'm trying to roll myself and it is very daunting to try and do part-time. So far I've refused the idea of going into debt. Married /w child + mortgage significantly limits my options but my goal is to get a proof of concept solid enough to demo, get buy in, and possibly fund at least short, dedicated sets of sprints, or additional developers to work with. http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment15http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment15Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:31:26 GMT"Now, a quirk in my psyche means that I am willing to be poor, I am not willing to be in debt." This should be the default behavior. Can't we just set this in human.config or something? http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment14http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment14Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:49:53 GMT"...I would pay them in advance." It is always good idea to pay. As "workers for hire" they won't be able to sue you for part of your profit (if you have proper contract and NDA in place). http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment13http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment13Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:46:49 GMTRe: Prices The numbers thrown around in one of Jeff Atwood's blogs about Valve indicate some interesting trends in pricing. Valve made a ridiculous profit on Left 4 Dead when they knocked it down to 1/2 price (something like a 320% increase in revenue). So starting with a solid price point of $300 definitely sounds like a good idea. Six months down the road after you've sold copies to the early adoptors and covered your costs, having an "NH Prof Weekend" and droping your price in half might be worth while. http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment12http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment12Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:40:51 GMTJoao, It would be a real PITA, yes. I would basically have to roll my own payment system, and pay the currency exchange rates. http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment11http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment11Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:31:02 GMTGermán: [Sticker shock](http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-sticker-shock.htm). A precipitous rise in prices tends to scare people away. In fact I am experiencing this problem in my own job. A gradual rise in prices is less likely to be noticed. http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment10http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment10Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:19:24 GMTI would also like to know about your decission to use WPF, the drawbacks you have found (or successes) and when you recommend it (if at all). http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment9http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment9Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:53:37 GMTI understand your hesitation to risk friendships if the project went south, but I'm sure there could have been ways around it. There's a big difference between getting everyone to quit their jobs and move into office space together and what you end up doing. I did the former and when we decided to call it quits, it definitely put a strain on my relationships with people I considered my good friends, but since than any future endevers have been part time with an agreement to split the profits and it has worked put much better. If you found people you trusted who also share a common goal, I'm sure a solution could have been found to get X amount of people to work 10-20 hrs a week on NHProf without risking bankruptcy (or at the least sending you to the poor house). Because it's not that NHProf is a 15 million dollar idea (based purely on market size), so risking personal money for limited profits seems a bit odd to me. http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment8http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment8Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:42:13 GMTHi, thanks for sharing your experience. Why do you say that moving the price up is hard to accomplish? http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment7http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment7Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:16:33 GMTHow much of a PITA would it be to charge in Shekels? Does anyone do it? http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment6http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment6Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:07:07 GMTSounds like a true ISV story, something a lot of developers set out to achieve. We'll done BTW, shipping a product is a lot harder than general application development as generally you need to develop and maintain the full product development chain by yourself, i.e. product development, bugs/issues, customer support, marketing website, online merchant etc. http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment5http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment5Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:33:08 GMTI read somewhere that four most important things when going to market are: 1. Market - Do you have a market to sell to. 2. Marketing - Can you adequately market your product via SEO, Twitter etc. 3. Aesthetics - Does your product look nice. If it is a developer focused product you might get away with something not so nice looking otherwise hire a designer. 4. Functionality - In the article it is promoted as a distant fouth. I think the important point is no.1, you should ascertain whether you have a market first before going any further. The biggest point of failure is developing something that people do not want. As developers we often get sucked into writing things that would be fun to write. NHProf is a good idea or at least it must be because I have purchased it!! http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment4http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment4Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:48:17 GMTExcellent post. Thanks for the insight. http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment3http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment3Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:32:31 GMTHey thanks for sharing this. I am considering a similar approach to getting some software built that I need so it is good to hear someone else has tried it with (so far) success. http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment2http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment2Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:54:28 GMTInteresting stuff, thanks for sharing that side of the story. http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment1http://ayende.com/4195/building-nh-prof-the-background-story#comment1Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:15:45 GMT