Roberto Galoppini is an Open Source veteran, who built his first Open Source company in the early 2000s. After selling his company in 2007 he has been consulting on open source strategies to IT Organizations until 2011, when he joined a US-based tech media B2B company to help hundreds of open projects to grow. In 2016 he started a new venture, whose mission is helping creators to develop, distribute and fund their own worlds of ordered beauty. In addition to helping FIleZilla to be sustainable and successful, he joined the project in his capacity as Director of Strategy.
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The FileZilla project started 20 years ago distributing a free simple FTP client with an easy interface. From no business to paid software and at last subscriptions.
Roberto’s introduction to Business Follows and FileZilla - 0:00
How to monetize FileZilla? What to put in the pro, what to keep in the free? Don’t upsell your community. Decided to only charge money for cloud functionality. - 1:24
Exploring same approach with FileZilla server. All features will be free, except for those needed in an enterprise setting. - 3:58
Moving from self-consumption of software to managed service. - 4:53
Other ways to monetize free software. Looked at cloud storage ventures in the crypto movement. (See: MetSafe, FileCoin, Sia, and Storj) - 5:58
Roberto’s method of open-source procurement, and eventually going with Storj. Roberto describes the relationship and process with Storj. - 8:26
Consider your options in this sense - partnering with other ventures/companies that may need what you have. Also think about Pro version (doesn’t need to be open core.) Trust is hard to achieve and easy to lose. Roberto describes joining the Ethical Ads movement as a response to user preferences around privacy. - 10:40
Do what you like - 12:28
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