All you need to build a business today is free open source software, a VPS, an AI API and S3-style file hosting.

Added to korrents 31 Aug 2026 · How quotes work · Something wrong? Tell us

Where this collides

• In tension with

  Founding alone is still a bad idea even though AI lets one person get more done, because the point of a cofounder is to share the stress.

  Graham says founding alone is still a bad idea even though AI lets one person get more done, because the point of a cofounder is to share the stress. Levels says all you need is free software, a VPS, an AI API and file hosting. The list of what you need is the disagreement: one of them counts a second person as infrastructure.

Shared subject first, then similar wording. They may agree or disagree.

• A business making hundreds of millions from an open source project owes it money or contribution, and can be refused its trademarks if it gives neither. MMMatt Mullenweg26 Sept 2024open source
• A company that will not accept a project’s terms is free to go and use a more permissive project instead. MMMatt Mullenweg26 Sept 2024open source
• A few hundred dollars a month is nothing to a company and transformative to a project, so engineers should be the ones asking their employers to pay it. DDDrew DeVault22 Aug 2018open source
• A licence is only the floor of open source; what keeps a project alive is an ethos of contribution that no licence can compel. MMMatt Mullenweg17 Sept 2024open source
• A proprietary language licensed from Microsoft had zero chance in the JavaScript ecosystem: TypeScript had to be open source or nobody would come. AHAnders Hejlsberg13 May 2026open source

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