29 ms·

How to pay your rent with your open source project

342 points by markosaric 6y ago

dgellow 6y ago
What about charging for build and distribution? Krita does something like this for their Steam and Windows Store versions, that helps finance their development. I personally believe that could also work for other distribution channels, such as a private APT repository, or equivalent to other platforms. People could still build by themselves from sources if that's what they want, and if you want convenience you buy the software. Has that been tested? I personally think that could even work for CLI tools if a great distribution channel exists (that's something I have in mind since a while now, see this ask HN from 5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22178949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22178949).
- leotaku 6y ago
  One problem I see is that for more tech-savy Linux users, which are the people most CLI software is targeted at, convenience means simply installing something via their distributions package manager. I am not interested in downloading your precompiled static binary or setting up your private repository. I want to run `foo install bar` and get on with my work. On the other hand there are some more mainstream optionally paid for (via Steam/Windows Store) GUI tools that I can freely download using my package manager, presumably because the main target audience actually prefers the paid distribution channels. I think the GUI/CLI app markets could be more different than you think.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    You’re right regarding the convenience point, to have a chance to work it has to be as straightforward as possible to buy and then install your tools. I understand the difference people expect from GUI vs CLI, I just don’t think it really makes sense to be ok to pay for one but not the other, and I see it as a missed opportunity for tool creators. Edit: Regarding Linux users as the main target, I don’t know if that’s true. I had mostly macOS in mind (I know I explicitly mentioned APT in my initial comment, that’s just what I had in mind at that moment), mac users seem to be ready to pay good money for their tools, there is a healthy market for GUIs. Something equivalent to homebrew cask but with an economics component may have its users if the tools being sold are considered valuable enough.
    - leotaku 6y ago
      I fully agree that it is unfair to creators that they cannot reasonably generate income from CLI apps. Still, I am unconvinced that the model you are proposing could gain viable traction. It might be that I am in a sysadmin bubble here, but I just think that the "paid store" model conflicts with how people use CLI software. For example, I suppose even the MacOS developers you mentioned would be interested in running e.g. `jq` on remote servers, virtual machines, docker, ... How could good UX possibly be achieved here? If you lock your hypothetical store down even a little bit, users now have to do complicated secrets management. If you don't and simply hope that everyone actually pays, you might as well just ask for donations.
      - dgellow 6y ago
        The docker case as an example: - your prod docker images are already very likely to be built by your CI - a Dockerfile typically does: apt update + install, git clone a private repository with your scripts, then build whatever you have to build - so you already have secrets to manage, given that you need to access your private git repository - in an environment such as Jenkins, Travis, Github Action, GitLab equivalent, secrets for your CI pipeline are equivalent to env vars that you add to your pipeline settings. It's quite unlikely that you have setup your own. - let's say you want to avoid to have the private repository as a point of failure, just store the downloaded archives to your own registry. Not too different from storing build artifacts. I'm not saying there isn't some friction, but it doesn't seem to be a deal breaker to me.
  - sammorrowdrums 6y ago
    Certainly I'm interested to see if many people have been clicking the "x packages are looking for funding" links with `npm` and could imagine that sort of in other package managers too... Personally I'm happy to see it. I keep thinking I'll ask my company to support ones we use, every time I run `npm install`, and I plan to do it soon.
- jakoblorz 6y ago
  I guess the problem is that once there is a paid CLI tool, some other dev will make a clone for his CV / GitHub where even the compiled binaries are free. Now people have to choose between the OG tool and maybe pay for it or use the mostly feature complete (or feature complete for a specific use case) free version. I would even go as far as the community will continuously switch to the free tool until the free tool has enough clout / traction to actually supersede or replace the OG tool. Theory: At this point, tutorials which are consumed by the beginners in the field will select the free tool (because it has a bigger target audience, so better SEO), which makes this whole thing a generational thing? „Oh in the early days we had to pay for this, now we use XY which is newer and shinier and even free, thus better“
  - kiba 6y ago
    Krita is free to download, so it doesn't really apply.
- gmueckl 6y ago
  This is the model for the Ardour DAW on Windows. You get the source or either a free binary that disables audio output after a few minutes or a paid for binary eithout that restriction. I don't know how well it works.
- Hex08 6y ago
  That's exactly what Aseprite (a pixel-art tool) does. I think it's great, I got it to build on Windows but eventually ended up buying it on Steam because it's so good.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    Wait, Aseprite is open source?! I didn't know that, it's an awesome program. Edit: Sources available, but not open source license as far as I understand the EULA. https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite
    - richrichardsson 6y ago
      More fully explained here : https://dev.aseprite.org/2016/09/01/new-source-code-license/ https://dev.aseprite.org/2016/09/01/new-source-code-license/ The license and FAQ are somewhat confusing as to if you need to pay for a license even if you compile from source.
- danilocesar 6y ago
  I think Ardour is doing the same. You can get the code and build it youtself, or you can pay them and get a proper build. Of course Linux distros are still building and shipping it.
- j1elo 6y ago
  It would be interesting to test this mode. I work for free on the source code, and you can get that for free. But if you don't know what to do with it (i.e. build it) or don't want the hassle of setting up a build environment, you can always pay the project for that effort. I'd argue this would need a special license deviation from the typical OSS ones to prevent distros from packaging it. Otherwise, this model would break down the moment an Ubuntu or Fedora decides to package the software and then the incentives to contribute some money in exchange for convenience dissappear.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    Yes, I arrived to this conclusion too, that to work it would likely not be actual open source (as defined by the Open Source Initiative).
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "What about charging for build and distribution? Krita does something like this for their Steam and Windows Store versions, that helps finance their development." Ardour[1] does this too, and from what I understand its lead developer manages to support himself from this. The Linux distribution that I use is Gentoo, and it has Ardour in its package repository, but that version is always old compared to the newest version of Ardour. So if I want the newest version I have to compile it myself (which I can and have done, as I have the technical expertise to follow their build instructions), but for others who want the latest pre-compiled and/or want to support Ardour's development, they can donate. There's also Harrison Mixbus[2], which is a commercial product built on top of Ardour by another company. [1] - https://ardour.org/ https://ardour.org/ [2] - https://harrisonconsoles.com/site/mixbus.html https://harrisonconsoles.com/site/mixbus.html
WJW 6y ago
TL;DR: start a business that sells a (possibly premium) hosted version of the project, sells training/support for the project or try to extract sponsoring from your users. It's less a "pay your rent with your open source project" article (as the title suggests) than a "start a business that happens to produce open source software" article. Also anyone with one or two smallish libraries need not apply, this is about projects with person-years of effort invested in them.
- typingmonkey 6y ago
  Yes I thought the same. They did not make money with the open source project, instead created a product and sold that.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Which in many ways looks deeply unapealing. The last thing I want to do is sell support or services. I'd much rather spend my time writing software that is easy to use and well documented.
    - krn 6y ago
      Then, I guess, the only choice is Github Sponsors. And it doesn't seem to be a bad one[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23613719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23613719
      - _frkl 6y ago
        That, or using a very restrictive copy left license.
        Avamander 6y ago
        GPL would protect more user freedoms and potentially avoid big SaaS providers making profit off of your product, but it won't help you earn money just like that.
ecmascript 6y ago
I use Plausible and switched immediately after the launch from GA. I am very satisfied except that it seems that I cannot share sites with other people, if we are more than 1 that manage it. I hope they'll fix that!
tannhaeuser 6y ago
Good article, but I thought webpack is founded by The OpenJS Foundation these days, who are making an astonishing job of identifying and sustaining core web packages. Unfortunately, they also picked controversial software like AMP (in exchange for contributions by Google I guess) to make it appear a grassroots or "legitimate" effort. Also, I think the ongoing trend to slap a thin wrapper on top of F/OSS and sell it as a service (aka "the Cloud") points to a weakness in F/OSS licensing schemes that needs to be addressed as I'm sure that almost all devs working on F/OSS don't intend their work to become part of a lock-in scheme, mass surveillance, or both, all the while not even getting contributions back. Apart from the licensing situation, F/OSS developers serious about generating an income might also need to work on integration and polish; at least it's what the success of stuff like Docker suggests, which, as super-practical as it is, in a way is benefitting from "too much" F/OSS, too many Linux distros, either too much or not enough NIH in F/OSS, F/OSS failing to directly engage with their user base, and/or developers not personally promoting their software such that the whole thing is falling prey to large corporations giving the illusion of order and maintenance, when the reality is that the initial development of any package of significant depth and its maintenance can only be provided by individual developers or small teams in the end.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > Also, I think the ongoing trend to slap a thin wrapper on top of F/OSS and sell it as a service (aka "the Cloud") points to a weakness in F/OSS licensing schemes that needs to be addressed as I'm sure that almost all devs working on F/OSS don't intend their work to become part of a lock-in scheme, mass surveillance, or both, all the while not even getting contributions back. the solution to "not even getting contributions back." exists since 2007 but apparently just writing the letters "A" "G" "P" "L" is enough to make a lot of people screech.
  - richardwhiuk 6y ago
    The AGPL doesn't guarantee that you'll get contributions back. For the very few companies who are willing to touch AGPL code, they only need to make the changes available (e.g. a CD in the post is sufficient). Very few companies are willing to use it, because it creates an almost unassailable hurdle in lots of industries. It's also highly at risk at making a bunch of other projects AGPL as well.
gurrone 6y ago
In 2019 someone from Elastic also tried to highlight the issue and various models at the market right now in a talk https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2019-2463-open_source_as_a_business https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2019-2463-open_source_as_a_bus... My main take away was "it's complicated". Sad story is that in many cases the biz paying for interesting contributions is questionable (Googel, Facebook et al).
open-source-ux 6y ago
There is another option, unpopular with some open source advocates, the source-only option. You simply sell your software product (with source code) for a price. That's it. Simple and uncomplicated. Your customers get the source of your app. They can modify the code to suit their needs. But unlike open source, they cannot re-distribute the app. Very few companies would object to this. Some popular and profitable projects that follow the source-only option are Kirby CMS and Craft CMS. Both these projects publish their source code on GitHub and rely on the honesty of their customers to pay for the product. This means that even people who would never purchase the products can still study and learn from the source code.
- FallsApart 6y ago
  That model falls apart from the start. If anyone is savvy enough to compile from source then why buy it? If the code is free, then, I don't see how they'd even bother to pay for it; it being the compiled version; of course. It the source is out they can't hardly enforce anything or much. People will just go to github and compile it for free.
  - joshuaissac 6y ago
    > People will just go to github and compile it for free. I think open-source-ux was talking about software where the customers would be companies, where there is comparatively less of an appetite for using pirated or unlicensed software.
  - open-source-ux 6y ago
    "That model falls apart from the start" Sure, there may be some individuals who will refuse to pay, but companies will not risk legal violations by not adhering to the licence conditions for the app. In fact, the 'source-only' model is nothing new. Back in the late 1990s, developers used to sell UI and data components for Delphi with full source code. Even though code wasn't published to public code repositorities, there was nothing to stop individuals posting those components to the internet for others to grab without purchasing. Even so, developers were able to successfully sell their 'source-only' components to other developers and companies.
fareesh 6y ago
This domain is blocked by my uBlock origin due to it being in "Peter Lowe's ad and tracking list"
- kranner 6y ago
  What version of uBlock Origin? I'm on 1.28.4 and it is not blocked for me.
- pgl 6y ago
  Yeah this was blocked for a day or two, a couple of weeks ago. Refresh your filter lists and it'll no longer be blocked.
axegon_ 6y ago
Sadly the article neglects the single biggest problem in open source: very few people, or companies for that matter, are actively willing to contribute in any way, whether it be contributing with code or financially supporting a project. Even big and popular open source projects are most often self-funded and it's people dedicating their own resources and spare time to support them. All of the things in the article are more than valid but creating an open source project that can potentially pay your rent is arguably just as hard as adding another letter to FAANG. As a matter of fact the letter might very well be an easier task.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  That's not always true. Turning an open source project into a stable business is difficult, but making a bit of money on the side isn't if you do something important and do it well. If you make the best breakfast in the morning people will come; If your library is the solution for (say) embedding python in COBOL and businesses use it, chances are they won't mind being able to pay for support. The first customer is the hardest to get but even relatively niche programming languages can have hundred dollar bug/feature bounties. Slightly unrelated: I think the best way to encourage people to contribute is to have a well documented, time-specified, friendly path for contributors. For example: (I won't name the project) I recently made a PR to a (definitely well known on HN) programming language's library and there was a fairly counterintuitive CI failure. A bunch of people turned up to provide completely useless advice that I had already tried, and promptly disappeared - it's now one of a 200 hundred ish PR queue that is largely full of things that people have wanted to work on but can't because the maintainers (as well as being busy) are dancing around doing a new thing every day rather than deciding whether to close or merge. PR-hell is a situation where a process obviously helps, like in corporate projects (Look at how Microsoft deal with GitHub issues for example) where someone will actually go through and decide.
  - axegon_ 6y ago
    I said most cases. What you are describing are the exceptions, not the rule. I don't remember how he phrased it exactly but about a year or two ago Andy Mueller tweeted that his biggest wish is that scikit-learn would eventually receive enough support to be able to have the maintainers work full time on scikit. Think about this for a second: I can't recall seeing a single ML project that doesn't rely on scikit to a certain degree and the core maintainers are 8 iirc. That's pretty sad if you ask me.
Milank 6y ago
Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Problems come if that peace of software gets popular, they get a lot of bug reports, improvement suggestions/requests, emails, noise in general. And a person who wrote the software has a full time job, so the time available for OSS is limited. That person is probably well paid in it's current job, so the OSS has a long way to go in order to replace that income, meaning it's very hard to transfer from a regular job to maintaining and living from your OSS. And the most important thing - those people are pure engineers, that don't know/are not interested in business, marketing, making a product out of their software, etc.. practically anything besides coding. It's like advising a mason: "Hey man, you know how to build a building, why don't you build one and sell it? You can pay the rent with it." It's a bit more complicated than that. But nice article overall, good starting point for someone who wants to find out more on the topic.
- alexellisuk 6y ago
  I have first-hand experience of this with OpenFaaS and other projects and wrote-up about it here, if anyone is interested in some long-term experience - https://blog.alexellis.io/the-5-pressures-of-leadership/ https://blog.alexellis.io/the-5-pressures-of-leadership/
- barrkel 6y ago
  Most people who write OSS do it as employees for companies for whom OSS is a strategic asset.
  - pabs3 6y ago
    This kind of situation is not evenly distributed. For example the Linux kernel is mostly like this, but lots of other things are not like this.
  - pankajdoharey 6y ago
    I would say a lot of people yes but "Most" may not be accurate clearly there are more projects on github than there are companies which are funding OSS projects.
ThePhysicist 6y ago
We're in the process of monetizing an open-source project as well (Klaro - https://github.com/kiprotect/klaro https://github.com/kiprotect/klaro). The project started as a "weekend hack" for our own website and became quite popular over time, to the points that it's used on thousands of websites already. We plan to keep the client software (i.e. the part that runs in the browser) open-source and feature-complete. We want to charge for backend services (managing consent data, scanning websites) and comfort features like a graphical configuration editor. That way we hope to enable users to still get great free value from the open-source version while allowing us to raise money for the development. Contrary to some other voices here we had great community contributions to our project right from the start: For example, almost all translations are contributed by the community and even some of the non-trivial features have been built by community contributors. That said it's a rather simple Javascript project and we try to keep it as accessible as possible. We have another open-source project (KIProtect - https://github.com/kiprotect/kiprotect https://github.com/kiprotect/kiprotect - just open-sourced it last week actually) which is way more complex and that we also want to monetize, we'll see how many contributions we'll get for that.
mwcampbell 6y ago
How about dual licensing of the core software itself? That is, release the source under a copyleft license, and sell licenses to companies who won't accept the copyleft terms. For libraries and tools targeted at software developers, I think the Parity Public License [1] is a particularly good choice. Taking it further, we should be willing to challenge the strict parameters of the Open Source Definition, the Debian Free Software Guidelines, etc. These aren't sacred texts, and for many applications, it doesn't matter if they can never be packaged in the main section of Debian or other distros that hold tightly to these rules. In particular, for applications that aren't targeted at software developers, releasing the source under a license that allows non-commercial use, then selling commercial licenses, is a completely sensible approach. For example, check out the Prosperity License [2]. Edit: To be clear, licenses like this one shouldn't be called open source; a common term is "source available". [1]: https://paritylicense.com/ https://paritylicense.com/ [2]: https://prosperitylicense.com/ https://prosperitylicense.com/
- ddevault 6y ago
  We shall not challenge the OSI and FSF definitions, because every principle that they defend is not only worth protecting, but under attack by bad interests. "Challenging" these is how you end up being gaslit by companies which are abusing the open source brand to peddle software that isn't. And such muddying of the waters makes it easier for companies to disregard the terms of copyleft licenses. This is non-negotiable: non-commercial licenses ARE NOT OPEN SOURCE, and people who argue for this are actively causing harm to open source. I expected better from you, Matt. However - by no means am I suggesting that non-commercial licenses or licenses which don't meet the other OSI or FSF criteria are wrong, or cannot be used to do good - nothing of the sort. But you need to give it another name. Some projects are using "Fair Source", for example.
  - mwcampbell 6y ago
    OK, the Prosperity license and others like it shouldn't be called open source. I should have been explicit about that, as I believe Kyle Mitchell (author of the two licenses I linked) is.
  - 6y ago
2can 6y ago
I’m working on a slightly cheaper alternative to Plausible called Nibspace - it’s $1 instead of $6 for similar traffic volume. https://nibspace.com https://nibspace.com
- crispyporkbites 6y ago
  So it’s only 1/6th as good?
  - 2can 6y ago
    Haha! You should try it and tell me! Jokes aside, it’s just my attempt at indie hacking. I have some experience in sysadmin, and based on that I simplified certain parts of the system, so overall it’s more affordable, yet remains profitable. It’s still early, and probably much worse than Plausible, Fathom or Simple Analytics, but I decided to make an offering based on the price as the space is pretty crowded. If it works, I promise you I will do my best to not make it a 1/6th of the quality. ;)
- aurimask 6y ago
  I noticed that you have a typo on main page: "1KB script makes your wbsite faster and lighter."
  - 2can 6y ago
    Thank you. I will fix that.
    - sireat 6y ago
      Also: Prioriority Support for the Pro plan
- simonw 6y ago
  Are you sure you want to deal with customers who only pay you $12/year? Any profit you get from them will be wiped out the second they send you an email and you take the time to read and reply to it.
ghengeveld 6y ago
For us, FOSS is the start of the funnel for our SaaS. Somewhat in-between the "hosted version" and the "premium features" buckets, but in separate projects. We employ the two core maintainers of Storybook (one of the most popular FOSS JavaScript projects) who work on it full-time. The rest of us build Chromatic, a SaaS that offers features on top of Storybook, and we occasionally work on Storybook too. Storybook is a tool for local development, so if a feature makes sense there, we add it to Storybook. If it needs some cloud connection/storage (e.g. for team collaboration), it becomes a Chromatic feature. We have a shared roadmap that doesn't prioritize one over the other, and Storybook has it's own steering committee.
- Legogris 6y ago
  Without having any knowledge of or experience with Storybook, that sounds like an optimal approach for such a project. I thin Hashicorp does something similar on top of slect core features (which tend to eventually end up on the free and open version eventually, which is funny because the enterprise customers end up being beta testers due to HC's habit of releasing features in a half-working state).
teraflop 6y ago
I feel like it's weird to first talk about aligning your incentives towards things that provide value to your users, and then suggest this business model: > Training, support or consulting services from the project’s maintainers without even mentioning that it creates exactly the opposite incentive. If you get paid to help people understand how to get stuff done with your product, you have absolutely no reason to improve the core product in ways that make it easy for them to figure it out on their own.
- dencodev 6y ago
  Your core product is something that needs to be popular enough that anyone needs your services though, and it's not going to be popular if it's difficult to learn and navigate.
  - teraflop 6y ago
    That's true, but that's exactly why this strategy can be so detrimental to the long-term health of a project. The core product has to be just barely good enough to solve a problem for enough people; once it gets popular, it can coast on that momentum for a while, even as it ossifies. I can think of a number of projects in the "big data" space that seem to have fallen into this trap.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    It also has to outcompete other products that do the same thing. That's not going to happen if your product is a baroque mess that requires a ton of support in order to use/setup/understand compared to other competing products. Ideally, your product is as easy to use as possible compared to other products, yet complex enough to require support. Anyway, many corporations will buy support as a matter of course, whether they need it or not. And if they want specific features they might pay to have them added rather than dedicate their own engineers to writing and maintaining that code, especially if they don't have the in-house expertise to do so.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Actually you do, stuff you do can be rolled back into your project. Not everything is binary. You can enjoy hacking on a project as well as making money on it.
pvaldes 6y ago
Not having to spend lotta money in licenses to work with their computer helps also.
pabs3 6y ago
I get the feeling that every model for a business making money from open source has some sort of perverse incentive.
- kemitchell 6y ago
  The value of software lies overwhelmingly in the software. Charging for anything else perverts incentives. Charging for features? Make it hard to add features. Charging for configuration? Make it hard to configure. Charging for training or documentation? Make it hard to understand. Charging for hosting? Make it hard to host, monitor, tune, &c. Not charging at all? Slurp up personal data on users, and charge for that. You can get good alignment in contracts that pay developers to write new software. And you can get good alignment in license agreements that pay for software already written. You can get good alignment in traditional software-vendor combination contracts for licenses or services plus maintenance and support. Depending on what you mean by "open source", a substantial number of potentially well aligned models go out of bounds.
victor106 6y ago
I asked this on HN a few days back. I open sourced a library and its become heavily used by some of the largest enterprises who make lot of money using that library as one of many. It takes a lot of my time to keep it updated so I would like to be compensated some how for the time it takes me away from my family Even though its used by small and medium businesses I would like only the largest businesses to pay for it. So how do I keep it open source as well as have the largest business pay for it? Any examples of open sourced applications doing the same?
- gpanders 6y ago
  Do you have any messaging suggesting that people donate in proportion to their ability/usage? I personally have found that I end up donating more frequently to projects that are both explicit about donating and make it easy to donate. Put a link in your README, sign up for GitHub sponsors, etc. And if you have a way to communicate directly with the largest businesses, don't feel embarrassed about nagging them about donating. It's likely that most still won't pay anything, but some will!
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  The most direct way to monetisation I’ve seen in the community is writing a book or doing consulting. Maybe there are other ways that aren’t as visible to a casual observer.
  - sushshshsh 6y ago
    So for someone trying to follow this path, basically I open source a library and try hard to get important people to adopt it, and then if/when they need more help using my code in their systems, they will pay me money to write the code for them instead of some other dev?
    - alextheparrot 6y ago
      I’ve been part of workshops run by key contributors, as well as seen consultants brought in to try to optimise code using their open source code. There are a lot of ways, but they usually aren’t as direct as “normal” employment. There’s also another category where you get hired by a company using your code to help drive and prioritise enterprise features in the project. I’ve seen plenty of internal forks of big open source projects where contributors are actively working and trying to upstream the internal development.
spieglt 6y ago
I work on open source projects* when I have a need that other tools don't quite fill properly, and because I like to work with languages like Rust and C that I don't get to use at my day job. I'd like to have a "buy me a cup of coffee" button on my Github because I have put thousands of hours into my side projects, but have no idea how to monetize really. And I wouldn't want to use the monthly supporter model because often when I finish a project I want to take months off, and may not have another idea for a while. *like https://github.com/spieglt/flyingcarpet https://github.com/spieglt/flyingcarpet https://github.com/spieglt/whatfiles https://github.com/spieglt/whatfiles https://github.com/spieglt/cloaker https://github.com/spieglt/cloaker
phjesusthatguy3 6y ago
I've made my time invested in open source projects pay for itself by not giving my source away for free. Present your project as any other paid-for system, let customers pay for it, and only then display access to source. One of two things happen: Paying customers continue to pay for your maintenance of the project, or they pass along the free link to your source and you know they're not a worthwhile customer.
agustif 6y ago
Offer a cloud-based and support, on-prem, etc as paid tier extras
Sephr 6y ago
I noticed that Plausible claims to measure traffic without being able to persistently identify users, but https://plausible.io/data-policy https://plausible.io/data-policy states that they store the following: hash(daily_salt + website_domain + ip_address + user_agent) There are optimizations that can help brute-force the enumeration of customer domains, browser UAs, and IP addresses (e.g. in some cases you could enumerate only residential ISPs). Update: I mis-interpreted "rotating salt" to mean something that could be re-computed on Plausible's backend. It appears that the salt is random[1] and generated on the client-side, which makes this hash much more secure. 1. https://github.com/plausible/analytics/blob/master/lib/plausible/session/salts.ex#L45 https://github.com/plausible/analytics/blob/master/lib/plaus...
- turtle99 6y ago
  How can you know if an IP adress is residential or not? Are there API / list of know IP ranges?
  - jan6 6y ago
    I'd think you can see who owns the IP range and check if it's some ISP... probably some api somewhere also... oooor just check the reverse dns and see if it's dyn.someISP
  - Sephr 6y ago
    It is possible to optimization enumeration of residential ISPs by subtracting datacenter IP addresses (among other tricks I would imagine). I've targeted residential ISPs before in this project: https://eligrey.com/blog/zerodrop/ https://eligrey.com/blog/zerodrop/
mperham 6y ago
It's kind of strange that the article lists me under "5. support and training". 100% of my income comes from the "4. premium version" model.

342 points by markosaric 6y ago

What about charging for build and distribution? Krita does something like this for their Steam and Windows Store versions, that helps finance their development. I personally believe that could also work for other distribution channels, such as a private APT repository, or equivalent to other platforms. People could still build by themselves from sources if that's what they want, and if you want convenience you buy the software. Has that been tested? I personally think that could even work for CLI tools if a great distribution channel exists (that's something I have in mind since a while now, see this ask HN from 5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22178949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22178949).

leotaku 6y ago
One problem I see is that for more tech-savy Linux users, which are the people most CLI software is targeted at, convenience means simply installing something via their distributions package manager. I am not interested in downloading your precompiled static binary or setting up your private repository. I want to run `foo install bar` and get on with my work. On the other hand there are some more mainstream optionally paid for (via Steam/Windows Store) GUI tools that I can freely download using my package manager, presumably because the main target audience actually prefers the paid distribution channels. I think the GUI/CLI app markets could be more different than you think.
- dgellow 6y ago
  You’re right regarding the convenience point, to have a chance to work it has to be as straightforward as possible to buy and then install your tools. I understand the difference people expect from GUI vs CLI, I just don’t think it really makes sense to be ok to pay for one but not the other, and I see it as a missed opportunity for tool creators. Edit: Regarding Linux users as the main target, I don’t know if that’s true. I had mostly macOS in mind (I know I explicitly mentioned APT in my initial comment, that’s just what I had in mind at that moment), mac users seem to be ready to pay good money for their tools, there is a healthy market for GUIs. Something equivalent to homebrew cask but with an economics component may have its users if the tools being sold are considered valuable enough.
  - leotaku 6y ago
    I fully agree that it is unfair to creators that they cannot reasonably generate income from CLI apps. Still, I am unconvinced that the model you are proposing could gain viable traction. It might be that I am in a sysadmin bubble here, but I just think that the "paid store" model conflicts with how people use CLI software. For example, I suppose even the MacOS developers you mentioned would be interested in running e.g. `jq` on remote servers, virtual machines, docker, ... How could good UX possibly be achieved here? If you lock your hypothetical store down even a little bit, users now have to do complicated secrets management. If you don't and simply hope that everyone actually pays, you might as well just ask for donations.
    - dgellow 6y ago
      The docker case as an example: - your prod docker images are already very likely to be built by your CI - a Dockerfile typically does: apt update + install, git clone a private repository with your scripts, then build whatever you have to build - so you already have secrets to manage, given that you need to access your private git repository - in an environment such as Jenkins, Travis, Github Action, GitLab equivalent, secrets for your CI pipeline are equivalent to env vars that you add to your pipeline settings. It's quite unlikely that you have setup your own. - let's say you want to avoid to have the private repository as a point of failure, just store the downloaded archives to your own registry. Not too different from storing build artifacts. I'm not saying there isn't some friction, but it doesn't seem to be a deal breaker to me.
- sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  Certainly I'm interested to see if many people have been clicking the "x packages are looking for funding" links with `npm` and could imagine that sort of in other package managers too... Personally I'm happy to see it. I keep thinking I'll ask my company to support ones we use, every time I run `npm install`, and I plan to do it soon.
jakoblorz 6y ago
I guess the problem is that once there is a paid CLI tool, some other dev will make a clone for his CV / GitHub where even the compiled binaries are free. Now people have to choose between the OG tool and maybe pay for it or use the mostly feature complete (or feature complete for a specific use case) free version. I would even go as far as the community will continuously switch to the free tool until the free tool has enough clout / traction to actually supersede or replace the OG tool. Theory: At this point, tutorials which are consumed by the beginners in the field will select the free tool (because it has a bigger target audience, so better SEO), which makes this whole thing a generational thing? „Oh in the early days we had to pay for this, now we use XY which is newer and shinier and even free, thus better“
- kiba 6y ago
  Krita is free to download, so it doesn't really apply.
gmueckl 6y ago
This is the model for the Ardour DAW on Windows. You get the source or either a free binary that disables audio output after a few minutes or a paid for binary eithout that restriction. I don't know how well it works.
Hex08 6y ago
That's exactly what Aseprite (a pixel-art tool) does. I think it's great, I got it to build on Windows but eventually ended up buying it on Steam because it's so good.
- dgellow 6y ago
  Wait, Aseprite is open source?! I didn't know that, it's an awesome program. Edit: Sources available, but not open source license as far as I understand the EULA. https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite
  - richrichardsson 6y ago
    More fully explained here : https://dev.aseprite.org/2016/09/01/new-source-code-license/ https://dev.aseprite.org/2016/09/01/new-source-code-license/ The license and FAQ are somewhat confusing as to if you need to pay for a license even if you compile from source.
danilocesar 6y ago
I think Ardour is doing the same. You can get the code and build it youtself, or you can pay them and get a proper build. Of course Linux distros are still building and shipping it.
j1elo 6y ago
It would be interesting to test this mode. I work for free on the source code, and you can get that for free. But if you don't know what to do with it (i.e. build it) or don't want the hassle of setting up a build environment, you can always pay the project for that effort. I'd argue this would need a special license deviation from the typical OSS ones to prevent distros from packaging it. Otherwise, this model would break down the moment an Ubuntu or Fedora decides to package the software and then the incentives to contribute some money in exchange for convenience dissappear.
- dgellow 6y ago
  Yes, I arrived to this conclusion too, that to work it would likely not be actual open source (as defined by the Open Source Initiative).
pmoriarty 6y ago
"What about charging for build and distribution? Krita does something like this for their Steam and Windows Store versions, that helps finance their development." Ardour[1] does this too, and from what I understand its lead developer manages to support himself from this. The Linux distribution that I use is Gentoo, and it has Ardour in its package repository, but that version is always old compared to the newest version of Ardour. So if I want the newest version I have to compile it myself (which I can and have done, as I have the technical expertise to follow their build instructions), but for others who want the latest pre-compiled and/or want to support Ardour's development, they can donate. There's also Harrison Mixbus[2], which is a commercial product built on top of Ardour by another company. [1] - https://ardour.org/ https://ardour.org/ [2] - https://harrisonconsoles.com/site/mixbus.html https://harrisonconsoles.com/site/mixbus.html

WJW 6y ago

TL;DR: start a business that sells a (possibly premium) hosted version of the project, sells training/support for the project or try to extract sponsoring from your users. It's less a "pay your rent with your open source project" article (as the title suggests) than a "start a business that happens to produce open source software" article. Also anyone with one or two smallish libraries need not apply, this is about projects with person-years of effort invested in them.

typingmonkey 6y ago
Yes I thought the same. They did not make money with the open source project, instead created a product and sold that.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Which in many ways looks deeply unapealing. The last thing I want to do is sell support or services. I'd much rather spend my time writing software that is easy to use and well documented.
  - krn 6y ago
    Then, I guess, the only choice is Github Sponsors. And it doesn't seem to be a bad one[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23613719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23613719
    - _frkl 6y ago
      That, or using a very restrictive copy left license.
      - Avamander 6y ago
        GPL would protect more user freedoms and potentially avoid big SaaS providers making profit off of your product, but it won't help you earn money just like that.

ecmascript 6y ago

I use Plausible and switched immediately after the launch from GA. I am very satisfied except that it seems that I cannot share sites with other people, if we are more than 1 that manage it. I hope they'll fix that!

tannhaeuser 6y ago

Good article, but I thought webpack is founded by The OpenJS Foundation these days, who are making an astonishing job of identifying and sustaining core web packages. Unfortunately, they also picked controversial software like AMP (in exchange for contributions by Google I guess) to make it appear a grassroots or "legitimate" effort. Also, I think the ongoing trend to slap a thin wrapper on top of F/OSS and sell it as a service (aka "the Cloud") points to a weakness in F/OSS licensing schemes that needs to be addressed as I'm sure that almost all devs working on F/OSS don't intend their work to become part of a lock-in scheme, mass surveillance, or both, all the while not even getting contributions back. Apart from the licensing situation, F/OSS developers serious about generating an income might also need to work on integration and polish; at least it's what the success of stuff like Docker suggests, which, as super-practical as it is, in a way is benefitting from "too much" F/OSS, too many Linux distros, either too much or not enough NIH in F/OSS, F/OSS failing to directly engage with their user base, and/or developers not personally promoting their software such that the whole thing is falling prey to large corporations giving the illusion of order and maintenance, when the reality is that the initial development of any package of significant depth and its maintenance can only be provided by individual developers or small teams in the end.

jcelerier 6y ago
> Also, I think the ongoing trend to slap a thin wrapper on top of F/OSS and sell it as a service (aka "the Cloud") points to a weakness in F/OSS licensing schemes that needs to be addressed as I'm sure that almost all devs working on F/OSS don't intend their work to become part of a lock-in scheme, mass surveillance, or both, all the while not even getting contributions back. the solution to "not even getting contributions back." exists since 2007 but apparently just writing the letters "A" "G" "P" "L" is enough to make a lot of people screech.
- richardwhiuk 6y ago
  The AGPL doesn't guarantee that you'll get contributions back. For the very few companies who are willing to touch AGPL code, they only need to make the changes available (e.g. a CD in the post is sufficient). Very few companies are willing to use it, because it creates an almost unassailable hurdle in lots of industries. It's also highly at risk at making a bunch of other projects AGPL as well.

gurrone 6y ago

In 2019 someone from Elastic also tried to highlight the issue and various models at the market right now in a talk https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2019-2463-open_source_as_a_business https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2019-2463-open_source_as_a_bus... My main take away was "it's complicated". Sad story is that in many cases the biz paying for interesting contributions is questionable (Googel, Facebook et al).

open-source-ux 6y ago

There is another option, unpopular with some open source advocates, the source-only option. You simply sell your software product (with source code) for a price. That's it. Simple and uncomplicated. Your customers get the source of your app. They can modify the code to suit their needs. But unlike open source, they cannot re-distribute the app. Very few companies would object to this. Some popular and profitable projects that follow the source-only option are Kirby CMS and Craft CMS. Both these projects publish their source code on GitHub and rely on the honesty of their customers to pay for the product. This means that even people who would never purchase the products can still study and learn from the source code.

FallsApart 6y ago
That model falls apart from the start. If anyone is savvy enough to compile from source then why buy it? If the code is free, then, I don't see how they'd even bother to pay for it; it being the compiled version; of course. It the source is out they can't hardly enforce anything or much. People will just go to github and compile it for free.
- joshuaissac 6y ago
  > People will just go to github and compile it for free. I think open-source-ux was talking about software where the customers would be companies, where there is comparatively less of an appetite for using pirated or unlicensed software.
- open-source-ux 6y ago
  "That model falls apart from the start" Sure, there may be some individuals who will refuse to pay, but companies will not risk legal violations by not adhering to the licence conditions for the app. In fact, the 'source-only' model is nothing new. Back in the late 1990s, developers used to sell UI and data components for Delphi with full source code. Even though code wasn't published to public code repositorities, there was nothing to stop individuals posting those components to the internet for others to grab without purchasing. Even so, developers were able to successfully sell their 'source-only' components to other developers and companies.

fareesh 6y ago

This domain is blocked by my uBlock origin due to it being in "Peter Lowe's ad and tracking list"

kranner 6y ago
What version of uBlock Origin? I'm on 1.28.4 and it is not blocked for me.
pgl 6y ago
Yeah this was blocked for a day or two, a couple of weeks ago. Refresh your filter lists and it'll no longer be blocked.

axegon_ 6y ago

Sadly the article neglects the single biggest problem in open source: very few people, or companies for that matter, are actively willing to contribute in any way, whether it be contributing with code or financially supporting a project. Even big and popular open source projects are most often self-funded and it's people dedicating their own resources and spare time to support them. All of the things in the article are more than valid but creating an open source project that can potentially pay your rent is arguably just as hard as adding another letter to FAANG. As a matter of fact the letter might very well be an easier task.

mhh__ 6y ago
That's not always true. Turning an open source project into a stable business is difficult, but making a bit of money on the side isn't if you do something important and do it well. If you make the best breakfast in the morning people will come; If your library is the solution for (say) embedding python in COBOL and businesses use it, chances are they won't mind being able to pay for support. The first customer is the hardest to get but even relatively niche programming languages can have hundred dollar bug/feature bounties. Slightly unrelated: I think the best way to encourage people to contribute is to have a well documented, time-specified, friendly path for contributors. For example: (I won't name the project) I recently made a PR to a (definitely well known on HN) programming language's library and there was a fairly counterintuitive CI failure. A bunch of people turned up to provide completely useless advice that I had already tried, and promptly disappeared - it's now one of a 200 hundred ish PR queue that is largely full of things that people have wanted to work on but can't because the maintainers (as well as being busy) are dancing around doing a new thing every day rather than deciding whether to close or merge. PR-hell is a situation where a process obviously helps, like in corporate projects (Look at how Microsoft deal with GitHub issues for example) where someone will actually go through and decide.
- axegon_ 6y ago
  I said most cases. What you are describing are the exceptions, not the rule. I don't remember how he phrased it exactly but about a year or two ago Andy Mueller tweeted that his biggest wish is that scikit-learn would eventually receive enough support to be able to have the maintainers work full time on scikit. Think about this for a second: I can't recall seeing a single ML project that doesn't rely on scikit to a certain degree and the core maintainers are 8 iirc. That's pretty sad if you ask me.

Milank 6y ago

Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Problems come if that peace of software gets popular, they get a lot of bug reports, improvement suggestions/requests, emails, noise in general. And a person who wrote the software has a full time job, so the time available for OSS is limited. That person is probably well paid in it's current job, so the OSS has a long way to go in order to replace that income, meaning it's very hard to transfer from a regular job to maintaining and living from your OSS. And the most important thing - those people are pure engineers, that don't know/are not interested in business, marketing, making a product out of their software, etc.. practically anything besides coding. It's like advising a mason: "Hey man, you know how to build a building, why don't you build one and sell it? You can pay the rent with it." It's a bit more complicated than that. But nice article overall, good starting point for someone who wants to find out more on the topic.

alexellisuk 6y ago
I have first-hand experience of this with OpenFaaS and other projects and wrote-up about it here, if anyone is interested in some long-term experience - https://blog.alexellis.io/the-5-pressures-of-leadership/ https://blog.alexellis.io/the-5-pressures-of-leadership/
barrkel 6y ago
Most people who write OSS do it as employees for companies for whom OSS is a strategic asset.
- pabs3 6y ago
  This kind of situation is not evenly distributed. For example the Linux kernel is mostly like this, but lots of other things are not like this.
- pankajdoharey 6y ago
  I would say a lot of people yes but "Most" may not be accurate clearly there are more projects on github than there are companies which are funding OSS projects.

ThePhysicist 6y ago

We're in the process of monetizing an open-source project as well (Klaro - https://github.com/kiprotect/klaro https://github.com/kiprotect/klaro). The project started as a "weekend hack" for our own website and became quite popular over time, to the points that it's used on thousands of websites already. We plan to keep the client software (i.e. the part that runs in the browser) open-source and feature-complete. We want to charge for backend services (managing consent data, scanning websites) and comfort features like a graphical configuration editor. That way we hope to enable users to still get great free value from the open-source version while allowing us to raise money for the development. Contrary to some other voices here we had great community contributions to our project right from the start: For example, almost all translations are contributed by the community and even some of the non-trivial features have been built by community contributors. That said it's a rather simple Javascript project and we try to keep it as accessible as possible. We have another open-source project (KIProtect - https://github.com/kiprotect/kiprotect https://github.com/kiprotect/kiprotect - just open-sourced it last week actually) which is way more complex and that we also want to monetize, we'll see how many contributions we'll get for that.

mwcampbell 6y ago

How about dual licensing of the core software itself? That is, release the source under a copyleft license, and sell licenses to companies who won't accept the copyleft terms. For libraries and tools targeted at software developers, I think the Parity Public License [1] is a particularly good choice. Taking it further, we should be willing to challenge the strict parameters of the Open Source Definition, the Debian Free Software Guidelines, etc. These aren't sacred texts, and for many applications, it doesn't matter if they can never be packaged in the main section of Debian or other distros that hold tightly to these rules. In particular, for applications that aren't targeted at software developers, releasing the source under a license that allows non-commercial use, then selling commercial licenses, is a completely sensible approach. For example, check out the Prosperity License [2]. Edit: To be clear, licenses like this one shouldn't be called open source; a common term is "source available". [1]: https://paritylicense.com/ https://paritylicense.com/ [2]: https://prosperitylicense.com/ https://prosperitylicense.com/

ddevault 6y ago
We shall not challenge the OSI and FSF definitions, because every principle that they defend is not only worth protecting, but under attack by bad interests. "Challenging" these is how you end up being gaslit by companies which are abusing the open source brand to peddle software that isn't. And such muddying of the waters makes it easier for companies to disregard the terms of copyleft licenses. This is non-negotiable: non-commercial licenses ARE NOT OPEN SOURCE, and people who argue for this are actively causing harm to open source. I expected better from you, Matt. However - by no means am I suggesting that non-commercial licenses or licenses which don't meet the other OSI or FSF criteria are wrong, or cannot be used to do good - nothing of the sort. But you need to give it another name. Some projects are using "Fair Source", for example.
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  OK, the Prosperity license and others like it shouldn't be called open source. I should have been explicit about that, as I believe Kyle Mitchell (author of the two licenses I linked) is.
- 6y ago

2can 6y ago

I’m working on a slightly cheaper alternative to Plausible called Nibspace - it’s $1 instead of $6 for similar traffic volume. https://nibspace.com https://nibspace.com

crispyporkbites 6y ago
So it’s only 1/6th as good?
- 2can 6y ago
  Haha! You should try it and tell me! Jokes aside, it’s just my attempt at indie hacking. I have some experience in sysadmin, and based on that I simplified certain parts of the system, so overall it’s more affordable, yet remains profitable. It’s still early, and probably much worse than Plausible, Fathom or Simple Analytics, but I decided to make an offering based on the price as the space is pretty crowded. If it works, I promise you I will do my best to not make it a 1/6th of the quality. ;)
aurimask 6y ago
I noticed that you have a typo on main page: "1KB script makes your wbsite faster and lighter."
- 2can 6y ago
  Thank you. I will fix that.
  - sireat 6y ago
    Also: Prioriority Support for the Pro plan
simonw 6y ago
Are you sure you want to deal with customers who only pay you $12/year? Any profit you get from them will be wiped out the second they send you an email and you take the time to read and reply to it.

ghengeveld 6y ago

For us, FOSS is the start of the funnel for our SaaS. Somewhat in-between the "hosted version" and the "premium features" buckets, but in separate projects. We employ the two core maintainers of Storybook (one of the most popular FOSS JavaScript projects) who work on it full-time. The rest of us build Chromatic, a SaaS that offers features on top of Storybook, and we occasionally work on Storybook too. Storybook is a tool for local development, so if a feature makes sense there, we add it to Storybook. If it needs some cloud connection/storage (e.g. for team collaboration), it becomes a Chromatic feature. We have a shared roadmap that doesn't prioritize one over the other, and Storybook has it's own steering committee.

Legogris 6y ago
Without having any knowledge of or experience with Storybook, that sounds like an optimal approach for such a project. I thin Hashicorp does something similar on top of slect core features (which tend to eventually end up on the free and open version eventually, which is funny because the enterprise customers end up being beta testers due to HC's habit of releasing features in a half-working state).

teraflop 6y ago

I feel like it's weird to first talk about aligning your incentives towards things that provide value to your users, and then suggest this business model: > Training, support or consulting services from the project’s maintainers without even mentioning that it creates exactly the opposite incentive. If you get paid to help people understand how to get stuff done with your product, you have absolutely no reason to improve the core product in ways that make it easy for them to figure it out on their own.

dencodev 6y ago
Your core product is something that needs to be popular enough that anyone needs your services though, and it's not going to be popular if it's difficult to learn and navigate.
- teraflop 6y ago
  That's true, but that's exactly why this strategy can be so detrimental to the long-term health of a project. The core product has to be just barely good enough to solve a problem for enough people; once it gets popular, it can coast on that momentum for a while, even as it ossifies. I can think of a number of projects in the "big data" space that seem to have fallen into this trap.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  It also has to outcompete other products that do the same thing. That's not going to happen if your product is a baroque mess that requires a ton of support in order to use/setup/understand compared to other competing products. Ideally, your product is as easy to use as possible compared to other products, yet complex enough to require support. Anyway, many corporations will buy support as a matter of course, whether they need it or not. And if they want specific features they might pay to have them added rather than dedicate their own engineers to writing and maintaining that code, especially if they don't have the in-house expertise to do so.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Actually you do, stuff you do can be rolled back into your project. Not everything is binary. You can enjoy hacking on a project as well as making money on it.

pvaldes 6y ago

Not having to spend lotta money in licenses to work with their computer helps also.

pabs3 6y ago

I get the feeling that every model for a business making money from open source has some sort of perverse incentive.

kemitchell 6y ago
The value of software lies overwhelmingly in the software. Charging for anything else perverts incentives. Charging for features? Make it hard to add features. Charging for configuration? Make it hard to configure. Charging for training or documentation? Make it hard to understand. Charging for hosting? Make it hard to host, monitor, tune, &c. Not charging at all? Slurp up personal data on users, and charge for that. You can get good alignment in contracts that pay developers to write new software. And you can get good alignment in license agreements that pay for software already written. You can get good alignment in traditional software-vendor combination contracts for licenses or services plus maintenance and support. Depending on what you mean by "open source", a substantial number of potentially well aligned models go out of bounds.

victor106 6y ago

I asked this on HN a few days back. I open sourced a library and its become heavily used by some of the largest enterprises who make lot of money using that library as one of many. It takes a lot of my time to keep it updated so I would like to be compensated some how for the time it takes me away from my family Even though its used by small and medium businesses I would like only the largest businesses to pay for it. So how do I keep it open source as well as have the largest business pay for it? Any examples of open sourced applications doing the same?

gpanders 6y ago
Do you have any messaging suggesting that people donate in proportion to their ability/usage? I personally have found that I end up donating more frequently to projects that are both explicit about donating and make it easy to donate. Put a link in your README, sign up for GitHub sponsors, etc. And if you have a way to communicate directly with the largest businesses, don't feel embarrassed about nagging them about donating. It's likely that most still won't pay anything, but some will!
alextheparrot 6y ago
The most direct way to monetisation I’ve seen in the community is writing a book or doing consulting. Maybe there are other ways that aren’t as visible to a casual observer.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  So for someone trying to follow this path, basically I open source a library and try hard to get important people to adopt it, and then if/when they need more help using my code in their systems, they will pay me money to write the code for them instead of some other dev?
  - alextheparrot 6y ago
    I’ve been part of workshops run by key contributors, as well as seen consultants brought in to try to optimise code using their open source code. There are a lot of ways, but they usually aren’t as direct as “normal” employment. There’s also another category where you get hired by a company using your code to help drive and prioritise enterprise features in the project. I’ve seen plenty of internal forks of big open source projects where contributors are actively working and trying to upstream the internal development.

spieglt 6y ago

I work on open source projects* when I have a need that other tools don't quite fill properly, and because I like to work with languages like Rust and C that I don't get to use at my day job. I'd like to have a "buy me a cup of coffee" button on my Github because I have put thousands of hours into my side projects, but have no idea how to monetize really. And I wouldn't want to use the monthly supporter model because often when I finish a project I want to take months off, and may not have another idea for a while. *like https://github.com/spieglt/flyingcarpet https://github.com/spieglt/flyingcarpet https://github.com/spieglt/whatfiles https://github.com/spieglt/whatfiles https://github.com/spieglt/cloaker https://github.com/spieglt/cloaker

phjesusthatguy3 6y ago

I've made my time invested in open source projects pay for itself by not giving my source away for free. Present your project as any other paid-for system, let customers pay for it, and only then display access to source. One of two things happen: Paying customers continue to pay for your maintenance of the project, or they pass along the free link to your source and you know they're not a worthwhile customer.

agustif 6y ago

Offer a cloud-based and support, on-prem, etc as paid tier extras

Sephr 6y ago

I noticed that Plausible claims to measure traffic without being able to persistently identify users, but https://plausible.io/data-policy https://plausible.io/data-policy states that they store the following: hash(daily_salt + website_domain + ip_address + user_agent) There are optimizations that can help brute-force the enumeration of customer domains, browser UAs, and IP addresses (e.g. in some cases you could enumerate only residential ISPs). Update: I mis-interpreted "rotating salt" to mean something that could be re-computed on Plausible's backend. It appears that the salt is random[1] and generated on the client-side, which makes this hash much more secure. 1. https://github.com/plausible/analytics/blob/master/lib/plausible/session/salts.ex#L45 https://github.com/plausible/analytics/blob/master/lib/plaus...

turtle99 6y ago
How can you know if an IP adress is residential or not? Are there API / list of know IP ranges?
- jan6 6y ago
  I'd think you can see who owns the IP range and check if it's some ISP... probably some api somewhere also... oooor just check the reverse dns and see if it's dyn.someISP
- Sephr 6y ago
  It is possible to optimization enumeration of residential ISPs by subtracting datacenter IP addresses (among other tricks I would imagine). I've targeted residential ISPs before in this project: https://eligrey.com/blog/zerodrop/ https://eligrey.com/blog/zerodrop/

mperham 6y ago

It's kind of strange that the article lists me under "5. support and training". 100% of my income comes from the "4. premium version" model.