alt Hacker NewsRecently I was wondering how viable it is to launch a niche, paid tool for Linux. I found that this is a very rare model, most tools are either just free, supported by sponsorship, supported by some paid cloud-based service that accompanies the tool, use an open-core model with paid add-ons.
I wonder if the decision of Little Snitch to make the Linux version free forever was also informed by this "no way to make money selling tools on Linux" wisdom or if there was another motivation. It seems that if any tool has chances of making decent money on Linux, a product like Little Snitch, which is already well established, with working payment infrastructure would be a good candidate.
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Many from linux crowd are slightly paranoid and ideological.
I'm as a linux user very reluctant to install anything proprietary that has such sensitive info as my network traffic and would rather use opensnitch or any other foss fork.
The same time I don't mind to pay for open-source, I donate several thousands USD per year to FOSS projects. But I guess I'm in a minority here and if you make the whole stack open-source you're not going to make many sells really.
As the author of Little Snitch for Linux, I can tell you what drives us: we are a small company where people (not investors) make the decisions. It was a personal choice of mine, driven by a gut feeling. I'm curious about the outcome...