FOSS Funding – Chapter 2 – Binaries

February 1st, 2023

We encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html In Chapter 1 we talked about one of the core challenges around FOSS monetization: open source licenses allow anyone to freely distribute copies of it. If a person starts charging money for it, without any additional benefit (e.g. enterprise support), somebody else will come along and redistribute it for free. This is why selling enterprise support has been a successful model for many […]

FOSS Funding – Chapter 1 – Open source has a funding problem

December 14th, 2022

This is the first post of a series about funding free and open source software. The fact that lots of open source software is largely underfunded is well documented. Many successful open source projects are successful because they stand on the shoulders of giants who absorb the cost of running it. A few reach world-wide success through adoption and find ways to sustain themselves via corporate/individual sponsorships. Ok great; but what about you? Say you have a project. It’s open-source. […]

Greed Phase of Crypto

May 1st, 2021

Seems like the crypto world is at it again! I blogged briefly about the denial phase of crypto back in 2018. The valuations went back to more “normal” levels after that post, but after a period of consolidation, it seems like we’re at it again. Has something changed in the technology? From a usability perspective, not a whole lot, really. Most crypto currencies are still just not really good at replacing fiat transactions. VISA and PayPal and a few others […]

Right To Repair

October 6th, 2020

I sincerely look forward to see more states and countries bringing forward right to repair laws. If you bought something, you should own it. I didn’t realize how bad this has gotten, until I tried to replace the batteries on both my Kindle and Google Pixel. It’s clear these people DO NOT want you to open these things up. My god. Took me a good hour to change the Kindle battery. Took me FOUR hours to pry open the Google […]

Hello, UAV4GEO

December 31st, 2019

Drone mapping has been the focus of my work for the past few years. For 2020 I’m planning to increase this focus with the development of DroneDB, which I have hopes will replace the (clunky) workflows around aerial data management. For this reason I’ve adopted a new name for all drone tech related business activities (and hopefully put an end on the “how do you spell Masserano?”). Say hello to UAV4GEO. Website: https://uav4geo.com

Running multiple SSL web service containers on the same host using HAProxy

October 10th, 2019

Scenario: Multiple containers running a web service over SSL (with their own certificates) Different web domains for each service Single machine and single public IP How to make both services work on the same machine? I couldn’t find easy instructions on how to get this done, but a bit of research and trial and error led me to HAProxy. The setup is pretty simple: Setup DNS A records to point to the machine for both domains Start the containers using […]

Highlights from Oculus Connect

September 26th, 2019

Prediction: VR will take-off within 10 years.

Self-Publish a Technical Book – Tools Overview

August 13th, 2019

I recently finished writing the first edition of OpenDroneMap: The Missing Guide. I thought I’d write a blog post about the overall experience in the hope that it will be useful to other want-to-be writers. First of all, if you are a software developer and you are thinking of writing a book about a project you’re involved with, don’t do it for the money; the amount of work required to write a book is huge compared to the monetary returns. […]

WebODM 1.0 Released

June 9th, 2019

On August 8th 2016, almost three years ago, the WebODM project was started. The goal was to bring a friendly user interface to OpenDroneMap, which at the time worked only via command line and had a bare-bone UI via NodeODM which lacked things like user authentication, map previews, 3D model display, etc. Yesterday I merged the entwine branch which upgrades the 3D model display to support EPT and the new features of Potree 1.6. The release is mostly symbolical, as […]

How To Make Money With Open Source? Hint: Sell Something

April 19th, 2019

Free and open source software is creating a lot of value. Maintainers however are often capturing no value from their work, rarely out of choice and often times because those individuals and companies that could contribute and fund the development of a project choose not to. And you can’t fault them. People need to ditch donations/crowdsourcing/patronization models and start selling something instead. Read the slides from my recent presentation at FOSS4G-NA: Please Sell Something – FOSS Funding for the Next […]

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