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I think it's brilliant. You get the benefits of having many more eyes on your code than you might be able to afford early on, which is huge. Besides, there are
by danilocampos 16y ago
I think it's brilliant. You get the benefits of having many more eyes on your code than you might be able to afford early on, which is huge.
Besides, there are examples of SaaS working for OSS apps not even invented by the vendor. Hosted SVN and Trac, for example, Github for git, and so on. There's also Magento, an OSS e-commerce product where the model is to give away the software and bill for the consulting to customize it.
So it's not crazy to give away your source and find the revenue elsewhere. If you make something good enough for another business to steal, you've got validation and who knows, perhaps a consulting client.
- kiba 16y agoMy wishes and empirical business opportunities doesn't seem to align itself. I want to be like patio11, making money off my customers and generally scale my solution, not offer consulting services to big corporations. Perhaps, I will find a happy medium. If that's not the case, than I'll have to figure out what to do next.
- danilocampos 16y agoJust mentioning some options. My big thrust is that code secrecy and success needn't be mutually exclusive. Consulting is one obvious piece. Hosted version control is the obvious validation of your hope that it's easier to pay a guy $5 to host a web app instead of hosting yourself.