Dear readers and customers,

the major problem for an indie publishing house like us developing for the F/OSS environment is not what to develop next or how to innovate but how to make money out of it.

It may sound unbelievable but in the last 30 years of open source existence, to this date there doesn’t seem to be a viable business model.

So, even if it is a lot of fun and we’re proud to be part of the WWW since more than 20 years as of this year, it sounds pretty incredible and frustrating that we, as others, aren’t commercially successful.

Why is that so is up to a discussion which we now would like to share with you all. It sheds some light on the problems we and others face and also tries to find some solutions for the bigger problems we had from the open source community in being a commercial success over the last decades:

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Living in pandemic times made the year 2020 the hardest so far since our founding in 2010. We’re working hard to deliver like always but it’s an open secret that to this date our work doesn’t compensate like a typical 9-5 job in the IT industry. Which is a pity but a reality we were ready to face from the beginning. Yes, we were young and stupid, ehhh, idealistic, back then.

But fear not: not every question in life needs an answer, that’s just not how reality works. With this posting we don’t want show our frustration but share some insights about the harsh business reality we and others from the open source community face on a daily basis. To be honest, if you’re not doing from your heart and not willing to create for some dozens instead of hundreds or thousands of users, you should overthink your ambition in general here. And believe us also when we say we’ll find a solution for every problem – it’s just a matter of time and it will tell us and others too that we were completely right from the start. F/OSS already runs and rules this highly technologised world, so we’ve got that going for us which is nice! 🙂

Take care, stay healthy, and enjoy your pre-Christmas times this year,
the aethyx staff