Companies are more than willing to pay for software, but there's little incentive when they would otherwise get it for free and you're asking for a charity hand

Companies are more than willing to pay for software, but there's little incentive when they would otherwise get it for free and you're asking for a charity handout. I'm sorry but that's just reality. If I were you, I'd figure out a way to earn money off of your project, perhaps by going open core and making a premium version with business-friendly features. I found these blog posts valuable: http://www.mikeperham.com/2014/10/01/the-path-to-full-time-open-source/ http://www.mikeperham.com/2014/10/01/the-path-to-full-time-o... http://www.mikeperham.com/2013/10/01/how-to-make-100k-in-oss-by-working-hard/ http://www.mikeperham.com/2013/10/01/how-to-make-100k-in-oss... Relatedly, this is why I intentionally didn't make my newest project open source. The project is DataDuck ETL (http://dataducketl.com/ http://dataducketl.com/) - if it were open source, companies would have used it for free and I'd be stuck maintaining and supporting them for free. Instead, I've already made five figures off of it, and it has only been out for a few months. I'm calling this "Supported Source" (http://supportedsource.org/ http://supportedsource.org/) and I encourage anyone to follow this same business model. In short, the code is publicly available online, and I'm open to collaborating or receiving commits, but companies need to buy a license to use it beyond a free trial. This is not open source, I agree, but it's similar to open source in many ways, and ultimately more sustainable than open source for certain types of projects. It's probably too late for your project but if you want to make money sustainably from it, I think you're going to have to move away from the charity model and more towards selling licenses with an open core or Supported Source business model. Or just regularly ask for donations and lower your expectations until its better aligned with what you're finding you can make.