On: Why Open Source Startups Fail

[onion2k]

That's a very limited definition of "fail". If a company opens it's product, runs successfully for years, builds something people actually use, and eventually shuts down leaving a legacy of a piece of useful software, then that isn't really a failure.

The investors would probably consider that business to have failed, in the sense that their gamble didn't pay off, but that's their problem. We don't have to think like investors.

[danielweber → onion2k]

It's a failure if any founders or employees took equity in lieu of significant salary.

Within the past year I had the experience of "oh, you wrote X? We used that all the time at my last company!" "So will you hire me." "No."