Frank Karlitschek shares his open source wisdom and lessons from building Nextcloud.  In this episode, we touch on hot topics like the sovereign cloud, avoiding cloud lock in, building and growing a successful bootstrapped open source company, dealing with consumers and large enterprises, and more! Frank has been in the open source industry for many years and has a unique perspective on what works and what doesn't.  This is episode 16 of the Hacking Open Source Business Podcast! In this episode: 00:00:00 Coming up next on the podcast: VC Expectations00:00:47 Intro: Welcome Frank, CEO of Nextcloud00:01:39 Learning about Nextcloud00:02:44 Branding as the open source version of X00:03:43 Where did you get the idea for Nextcloud?00:04:57 Business or Project? What was the end goal?00:06:13 Deciding on business, pricing, & support models00:08:03 Figuring out the core demographic, planning for growth, and sometimes getting it wrong00:09:17 Why is the sovereign cloud important00:11:05 The first contributor, accelerating contributions, and hiring contributors00:12:29 100% bootstrapped, no external investors00:14:07 How do big organizations or governments affect the roadmap for an open source project?00:16:22 Lessons learned from dealing both with consumers and businesses00:17:36 What advice would you tell your younger self? Don't accept the way things are!00:20:15 How do you decentralize the cloud?00:21:36 Cloud lock-in00:22:25 Rapid Fire Questions!00:23:01 Favorite open source tool00:23:21 First Linux distro00:24:27 Conference walk up music00:25:36 Favorite beverage00:26:27 What is new and exciting in the open source space00:27:38 Thoughts on AI & Copilot00:29:39 Favorite food00:30:01 Thank you! Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos:  https://www.youtube.com/@opensourcebusiness Don’t forget to visit the open source business community at:  https://opensourcemetrics.org/ Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption:   https://about.scarf.sh/ Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite  app: Spotify: https://l.hosbp.com/SPodcast Apple:     https://l.hosbp.com/APodcast Google:  https://l.hosbp.com/GPodcast Buzzsprout:  https://podcast.hosbp.com #opensource #business #metrics #businessmetrics #foss #podcast