70 products left, but today draw
Hi friend π,
One of the gaps in my career is my contribution to open-source projects and communities. I've always found it difficult since I assumed you needed a substantial personal income to do that. I'm not sure if this is true in your country, but in Turkey, I saw and met some of the brightest and most talented engineers in these communities. I created a blog post about Aaron Swartz in 2014, and it went viral. Even just talking about him was an honor for me. People can internalize their ideals through their work. So I was probably mistaken regarding the requirement of a sustainable income. To be more specific, I believe I misunderstood what it means to be sustainable. I'm a child of the boomer generation, and I grew up with a boomer worldview. I can see why I thought that way now, but you can never undo the past.
And the existing ecosystem's paradigms, such as growth strategies, marketing, and sales, are fundamentally different in these types of organizations and products. Even the product itself may differ. For example, you may not require authorization and instead position your product as a restaurant where anyone can come and go as they like. What if you require a user-specific history? Simply use the end-userβs cloud. user's How are we going to make money? Simply include your app as an extension for enterprise workplace suites such as Atlassian. The product I'm going to mention today does the same thing.
Today, diagrams (formerly draw.io) is our product.
You can see how they make money in the video above. However, if you wish to use it, simply type "draw.io" into your browser's address bar. It will request your cloud only to save your data. It's a platform where you can draw any diagram you need, and it's been my go-to product for many years when I need to draw. They also have a Confluence add-on that allows you to quickly collaborate with your team members.
However, aside from the product, I'd like to discuss a fascinating topic with you. They started with diagram.ly and then switched to draw.io because they thought ".io" was cooler than ".ly." And two years ago, they switched to the ".net" domain, with an explanation that can only be found in the open-source community. You may be aware that domains such as ".me" and ".tv" bring in millions of dollars for the small governments that own them. That is a capitalism hack, and I find it amusing all the time. However, thanks to British Imperialism and the Cold War, the case with ".io" is different. I will not go into the details of course, and more information about this topic can be found on the internet. As a result, the team behind the tool discovered this and changed both the domain and the product name. Consider how much that operation could cost the team. That is simply impossible in standard companies, given our paradigms.
Anyway, draw.io, diagram.net or diagram.ly is an excellent tool for everyday use. I strongly advise.
Weβll talk again tomorrow.