4 ms·

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

by 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.
        _frkl 6y ago
        True, but depending on what you created, it might open up the path to dual licensing.
    - finolex1 6y ago
      The things the author does to go from 7K/year to a 100k/year looks awfully a lot like selling support or services.
    - balfirevic 6y ago
      Unfortunately, it's not available worldwide.
bregma 6y ago
Oh come on, if it was possible to run a business model like that it would have been done. You would see multi-billion-dollar-valuation publicly traded companies like, say, Red Hat out there. If it was sensible you'd see people like RMS and the Free Software Foundation advocating for it.
- Strom 6y ago
  Not everything that is possible has been done. That is such a dark outlook. Do you really think 2020 is peak humanity? New approaches are successful all the time.

by WJW 6y ago

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.
      - _frkl 6y ago
        True, but depending on what you created, it might open up the path to dual licensing.
  - finolex1 6y ago
    The things the author does to go from 7K/year to a 100k/year looks awfully a lot like selling support or services.
  - balfirevic 6y ago
    Unfortunately, it's not available worldwide.

bregma 6y ago

Oh come on, if it was possible to run a business model like that it would have been done. You would see multi-billion-dollar-valuation publicly traded companies like, say, Red Hat out there. If it was sensible you'd see people like RMS and the Free Software Foundation advocating for it.

Strom 6y ago
Not everything that is possible has been done. That is such a dark outlook. Do you really think 2020 is peak humanity? New approaches are successful all the time.