Datasette is a open project from simon willison (a fairly well known HNer), and this looks like his monetisation project - good luck to you, hope Softbank buys you out soon :-)
(It's a sort of wrapper around sqlite files so it's fairly easy to publish a file, think maybe Tableau for sqlite?)
I realized that Datasette is the first project of my entire career where if I was still working on it in 15 years time I wouldn't feel bored yet. There's just SO MUCH scope for interesting applications of the core idea.
As such, I want to work on it for decades. But it's lonely working on it alone (the community around it has been growing and is delightful, but it's not the same as having a full-time team.)
So the question I'm trying to answer is how to make the project financially sustainable in the long-run - not just for myself, but so I can pay for a team to work on it with me.
There are plenty of other examples of open source projects that have turned SaaS hosting into a sustainable business model - WordPress and GitLab are just two of the best examples. It feels like it's a reasonably well-trodden path.
Plus... I want people to be able to use my software. Currently to use Datasette as an individual you either have to "pip" or "brew" install it, or you can try the macOS Electron app - https://datasette.io/desktop - but I want newsrooms to be able to use it to collaborate on data. And most newsrooms aren't well equipped to configure a Linux server.
So I realized that a hosted SaaS version can solve two issues at once: it can help the audience I care about actually benefit from the value of the software so far, and it provides a reasonably realistic path to financial sustainability for the project as a whole.
And yeah, I'd also like to make a ton of money out of it myself too!
I am generally a naive and simple person. I think I would appreciate some investment to make Datasette "more approachable" and user-friendly for laypeople.
Datasette's UX and setup seem to be more geared towards data hackers with a hobby in reporting. Personally, I don't see it as a standard toolkit for data reporting or data journalism. Even though you might argue, "What more do you want? It's as simple as it gets", to be honest, Simon has mentioned that their intended users are journalists who may not possess data hacking skills required to get started with Datasette.
Datasette is not a BI tool or an OSINT tool. As it is, Datasette is positioned between data enthusiasts and investigative reporters which is a very narrow niche. This severely limits its potential.
Simon should consider monetization and, more specifically, hiring individuals who can make Datasette Cloud more accessible. I think he recognizes this as he has created a GUI application which is a step in the right direction.
> As it is, Datasette is positioned between data enthusiasts and investigative reporters which is a very narrow niche. This severely limits its potential.
i bet in 2005 if you asked Simon what Django was initially intended to be, he'd say something similarly niche. dot dot dot, it became the backend for Instagram. gotta change hats from evaluating present state to future potential when presented with something new, particularly when the author has a track record.
Kind of funny that it's nearly 20 years later and I'm working on something else that I initially thought would be for journalists but is clearly useful for way more than that.
Journalists are good at words. An interface to their data that plays to their strengths there feels like it could be transformational - provided it doesn't hallucinate at them!
> Datasette is not a BI tool or an OSINT tool. As it is, Datasette is positioned between data enthusiasts and investigative reporters which is a very narrow niche. This severely limits its potential.
FYI, you can already perform some "BI as code" (as I like to call it) using the Datasette Dashboards plugin[1]: specify charts using SQL queries + a visual spec (Vega, Vega-Lite, Maps, Tables, etc.), and assemble a dashboard layout. It is not yet as feature-full compared to Metabase for instance, but several people have been using it for various use-cases successfully.
(disclaimer: I'm the author of the Datasette Dashboards plugin)
(It's a sort of wrapper around sqlite files so it's fairly easy to publish a file, think maybe Tableau for sqlite?)
Anyway all the best