Open Source Questions

[bbertucc]

Friends have questioned my sanity, but I'm devoting much of my 33rd year to coding this open source accessibility platform.

My reason is simple: Accessibility services are inaccessible.

Services such as SiteImprove and AccessiBe are either gouging customers or developing solutions where the fix is worse than the flaws. Tools like Google LightHouse require some engineering skills to customize. Other tools, like the free accessibility scans on vendor websites, offer limited features.

I want to create an easy-to-use service that makes the internet more accessible, offering advanced scanning tools to everyone. Think of my service as the WordPress of accessibility scanners.

Initially, I thought publishing our code under an open source license would make accessibility more accessible. Like GitLab and other products built on open source code, we would offer our core features for free. The development of free core features would be subsidized by charging for features that large companies need, like advanced notifications.

The issue with my original vision is that most website owners don't code. While Equalify is as easy to install as WordPress, creating a local server is daunting. Users with no budget would need some technical skills to run the free version of Equalify. Is that fair?

Another issue is that companies who sell Equalify have little incentive to contribute new code. I've seen this problem in the WordPress ecosystem: A hosting company launches a managed version of WordPress. They attract users with a fancy proprietary feature like "faster loading." Another hosting company offers even faster load times. The hosting companies have no incentive to contribute their better solutions to the open core of WordPress, and WordPress load times suffer.

How can competition around premium features benefit an Open Source project?

The WordPress solution to the problem of companies not contributing is Five for the Future. For contributing 5% of employees' time, WordPress promises "cost-effective training or growth opportunities."

I ran a web development agency for a decade. We tried to donate a percentage of employees' time. Unfortunately, peer-to-peer training within the agency was far better at growing employee skills than contributing to WP projects.

Should we focus on a low price point vs. open source code?

If Equalify makes our code proprietary, we avoid the problem of companies competing with premium features. Proprietary code also pushes us to offer low-cost services, since we won't have to support our work by charging for services that large teams want.

Instinctually, I want to battle against proprietary code. I started hacking because WordPress released code under an open source license. Like me, many friends have built businesses from open source code. But perhaps I should think about the people who do not want to code?

96.8% of the million most popular homepages fail WCAG compliance tests. How does Equalify make the internet more accessible?

Should I focus on cost-effectiveness or code openness?

Curious what you think!

[bbertucc]

@aberkow suggested a free tier as the solution. Similar to what Gatsby does: https://www.gatsbyjs.com/pricing/

Adam's answer resolves my bigger issue around pricing. Equalify can be open source and free!

[aberkow]

happy to help! I think this is a great project and I'm excited to see how it develops.

[bbertucc]

Thanks! We're chipping away every day!

[bbertucc]

Leslie Sim offered some great questions:

What's your goal though? What are the boundaries/constraints of your project?
For example... I want 75% of the top million websites to be accessible due to Equalify. And I'm ok if I make $0 as a result.
Or I was 75%, and I want to make $5-10mil.
Or I want Equalify to be the starting point, and hope more accessibility software gets made. I just want to work on it this year and hope someone else gets inspired and takes the reins...
Like, what do you want? From there, it could be easier to find an open source (or some other biz model) that meets those needs.

Leslie's response raises the question of impact. How much impact can be achieved without becoming an absentee father?

[jrchamp]

You could also use the Red Hat model: have a tier/addon that charges yearly/monthly for premium support and use the money to pay professionals to add the fixes to open source plugins and themes. Then the customers know that if an issue comes up they'll be able to get help from a professional to address the underlying issue. It's cheaper for the customers who can't afford a full time accessibility professional and benefits everyone.

That way, everyone can benefit from the core tool, the world can benefit from overall improvements, but people who have money to pay for peace-of-mind are getting a real accessibility benefit instead of a "one-click" fake accessibility benefit.

[bbertucc]

Thanks @jrchamp ! You give me a good reason to dig into Red Hat's model again. From what I remember, my main criticism was that their support focused on customers from large companies. That made their support services inaccessible to users. Aquia has a similar problem. Maybe the answer is to marry the Red Hat model with the free tier solution that @aberkow suggested. I imagine the result would look something like Gitlab.

[jrchamp]

Definitely finding the right balance takes time. The key is to have the the financial motivators aligned with the social/moral motivators. If you can reduce your overhead/maintenance costs by improving the quality of the ecosystem, then everyone wins. Then your users say good things about you and you get more users.

It's not a big surprise that their support focused on large, paying customers. Support costs money. However, if the paying customers cover the cost for their support and some of the money goes towards scalable general support, then everyone can benefit again. It's definitely difficult to provide a high quality free service, but that's also where you'll see "Community Moderators" who are rewarded in other ways for their contributions to a community forum or feature request system.

[bbertucc]

It's definitely difficult to provide a high quality free service, but that's also where you'll see "Community Moderators" who are rewarded in other ways for their contributions to a community forum or feature request system.

For sure. I definitely want to keep this in mind. We can offer a managed "Free tier" with access to community tools and moderators. That allows us to support the many many folks who can't afford accessibility services, while offering Red Hat-like support for the bigger guys who want a hand to hold.

[bbertucc]

Tragedy of the Commons comes up frequently when discussing open source business models. In addition to the problem of more users exploiting the resource then sustaining it, open source projects also limit the possibility of governance by mandating free use of the resource. I want to bookmark tragedy of the commons in this discussion, so hopefully we can work away from it as we build an open source project.