COSS Media is a new learning platform that delivers actionable knowledge to help Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) founders build lasting companies.
Why are we starting this?
As open source eats the world of both software and hardware, inevitably, there will be more open source projects, more entrepreneurs building companies on top of them, and more hunger for information to help them.
While the Internet is awash with generic startup advice, the challenges of building a COSS company is materially unique. There's a dearth of focused and actionable knowledge available to help founders think through important COSS-specific questions (like licensing and business models) and avoid common mistakes (like conflating your community project with commercial product). That's why we are building COSS Media.
The operative word here is "actionable". Our guiding principle is to avoid startup platitudes and high-mindedness, deliver material you can act on today (and hopefully see results quickly), while retaining valuable nuances. COSS Media's four major categories – Building Company, Fostering Community, Developing Product, Doing Business – are deliberately action-oriented.
The initial phase of COSS Media will have content generated by the expert team at OSS Capital, plus the wider COSS founder community from Commercial Open Source Software Index (COSSI) and those who participated in the first Open Core Summit. Content will come in multiple formats, e.g. weekly pro-tip sheet in your inbox, blogs, video playlists, slides, since we all learn differently. As COSS Media expands, we will also produce podcasts, reports, even books, to continue making information more accessible and useful.
To get started, we encourage you to subscribe to COSS Media, and check out these fan favorites:
- Open Core - Definition, Examples & Tradeoffs
- OSS Will Eat Cloud Computing
- COSS Business Model Progressions
We don't pretend to know everything there is to know about building every type of company. But, if you are building, or thinking about building a COSS company you've come to the right place.
As you embark on your entrepreneurial COSS journey, we'll be right here with you.
Joseph Jacks (@asynchio), Bruce Perens (@BrucePerens), Kevin Xu (@kevinsxu)
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