> I think it's complicated; the fact that I use a free slack instance for note taking / bots is one thing, but I'm on 2 company slacks right now (paid), 2 non-profits (1 paid 1 not) and a handful of open source communities. Am I a user who won't convert?
Everyone on a free slack instance is NOT using a competitor's product.
I’d suggest the answer to that is probably no - an open source community is by its very nature going to want costs and overheads down, and all but the largest non profits and NGOs are going to try to get by by stitching together free tools and services. The one that is paying in your example is the one in Slack’s target who is going to be most likely to pay. Does Slack care about a few open source communities potentially churning? Probably not. Does it care about lowering average Time to Revenue? Absolutely.
I’d suggest the answer to that is probably no - an open source community is by its very nature going to want costs and overheads down, and all but the largest non profits and NGOs are going to try to get by by stitching together free tools and services. The one that is paying in your example is the one in Slack’s target who is going to be most likely to pay. Does Slack care about a few open source communities potentially churning? Probably not. Does it care about lowering average Time to Revenue? Absolutely.