Are there any situations you would compare this to historically?

To me, the obvious comparison seems to be Docker. Their tooling revolutionized software development and made cgroups and containerization accessible to the masses. Yet they generally seem to have failed to extract payment from users, even with managed service opportunities.

It seems to me that there are substantial obstacles to monetizing a project licensed with even a weaker OSS license like MIT. I think this is especially true for projects that don’t have managed service / “open core” potential.

Any gratis project you rely on runs the risk that it will no longer be provided gratis. That alone is not a strong basis for making decisions.

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switz 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's a shame that VCs have corrupted a $200MM/year business into the perception as a failure. Who cares if the VCs didn't get a large return, or if the outsized impact of the software didn't quite fully capture the value created. $200MM/yr without aggressive R&D or operational costs could be an incredibly healthy business.

Maybe we should stop trying to build so many billion dollar/year businesses and work on more sustainable models.

	▲	antonvs 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I haven’t followed Docker’s case in particular, but how much investment was required to get it to that point? If it’s a case of “How do you become a millionaire? Start as a billionaire and invest in Docker”, then the perception may have some basis.

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pjmlp 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The audio and 3D card pioneers in the PC world.

The ones that were first to market went all bankrupt, or were acquired by others that came later into the scene.

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marshray 4 hours ago | parent [-]

1. At least 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth are now extinct. I.e., that's life.

2. "But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders."

	▲	pocksuppet 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Failure for those species though.