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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 li

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.
  - droobles 6y ago
    I assume yes because of your deep knowledge related to the package, whereas they don't have to spend time ramping up an in house dev to learn the ins and outs of it.
gonzo41 6y ago
Can you just change the license terms on your next update to say, if your market cap reported in the FY is over threshold set by this license then you have to pay a flat fee of X.
ianbooker 6y ago
Offer paid support. Most managers in businesses love to outsource accountability for cash. The trick is to not also take in their work (i.e. for integration).
- muttled 6y ago
  Are there any tricks to not getting entangled in the integration web? I could think maybe keep some references on hand of people who do integration work and refer them instead whenever the topic comes up?
  - agustif 6y ago
    Run a partner program and get a cut.
pmoriarty 6y ago
Some other ideas: 1 - Charge for support. 2 - Put a Patreon and/or Paypal link prominently on the front page of the website for your product, and clearly and politely ask for financial support. Often people want to help out financially, but they don't see an easy and convenient way to do so. This is one way to let them know how they can. 3 - Consider running Kickstarter campaigns to add new features. See the successful Magit kickstarter[1] for a perfect model of how this was done for a very popular open source project. [1] - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681258897/its-magit-the-magical-git-client https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681258897/its-magit-th...
- amelius 6y ago
  > Often people want to help out financially, but they don't see an easy and convenient way to do so. Except people who use your product (engineers) have one extra hurdle: they need an OK from the financial department, and I suppose that this hurdle is often quite big.
jahewson 6y ago
Sponsorship, etc. linked to broader goals, such as features, better docs. Reach out to businesses with a positive message: what can we offer if you help us out? Showcase your sponsors, build a small community.
klohto 6y ago
Consulting or support. State it clearly on the project page and make sure you have a correct license. You need be aware if the library choice in said enterprises is a must-have or nice-to-have. I wouldn’t bet on corp. manager freeing a budget for a non-critical library. Also, while handling tickets, you can politely explain the user the paid support or consulting if they need it ASAP or require more support. This will can get the manager’s attention more than just “let’s support this guy because we use it”. As a last resort, you could consider paywalling new features and improvements. Or basically creating paid downstream product with a support and implement changes to the upstream. Sounds awful but that’s basically what most open-source companies do to keep new products alive :)
wackget 6y ago
Which library is it?
victor106 6y ago
Thanks for all the suggestions. I will consider offering consulting support. I just wish there was an open source license that basically says "its free to use but if your company makes more than x billion of dollars in profit then you have to pay $x per month/year."
- mhh__ 6y ago
  If you offer GPL/Commercial dual licensing then that basically is the case because large companies generally don't have lawyer-approval for GPL in their codebases (not always but as a rule of thumb they don't like the GPL). I think the aforementioned model is the best one for the longevity of an open source project - If you want to use my work for free, then give something back to the project (your changes) but if you don't want to do that then please support it financially.
  - victor106 6y ago
    Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much. I hope this is beneficial for others in the same boat as me.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  You could just write that term into a modified BSD license or some such. It wouldn't be Open Source at that point but it would get your point across. Enforcement would be difficult but you'd really only need to rely on the rule following behavior of a few big corps
  - amelius 6y ago
    Sounds like a good idea, theoretically, making those BigCorps pay an open-source tax :) I wonder if that sort of discrimination is allowed though. I also wonder if package bundlers like Ubuntu would consider to bundle the project with their distros, if it has such a license slapped on it.
cbm-vic-20 6y ago
CKEditor (https://ckeditor.com/ https://ckeditor.com/) releases their product using the GPL license. Most large business avoid the GPL since they don't want to release their own code in accordance with the GPL. CKSource, the company that releases CKEditor, sells commercial licences to those companies, and will issue free licenses to GPL-incompatible open source projects. https://ckeditor.com/pricing/ https://ckeditor.com/pricing/
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  Can you release the same code under two licenses?
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    If you hold sufficient copyright to do so (e.g. you wrote all the code), yeah. Licenses are a gift, not an obligation.
- thrownaway954 6y ago
  THIS RIGHT HERE. the best ways i know of to make money doing OSS is charging for support and selling a commercial license so that enterprises can keep their code changes private.
- benkaiser 6y ago
  Can confirm, a team I used to work on in Microsoft pays $$ to use CKEditor in their product.
- amelius 6y ago
  This seems to be against the spirit of the GPL, however.
stubish 6y ago
You might have some luck with Tidelift (https://tidelift.com/about/lifter https://tidelift.com/about/lifter). I get pizza money every month for a long time top-20 (by download count) Python package, which isn't much, but I never expected anything so fine.
mperham 6y ago
Easiest is to license it as GPL or AGPL, sell a commercial license.
- KMnO4 6y ago
  Seems like that would do a lot of harm to your project. GPL isn't the only way to restrict commercial use. It's definitely the best way to annoy people working on non-commercial OSS with any other license though.
wizzwizz4 6y ago
How about asking them to sponsor it? And as part of the sponsorship, they get to schedule meetings (no more than 30 minutes a day, perhaps?) where they can tell you how they're using the library, so you can consider that when making changes. So long as it's clear you have no obligation to re-write the library especially for them, will this work?
stjohnswarts 6y ago
charging for support and giving companies MIT style license with their name attached as exclusive licensee for that version is the best way that I've found. New features and customizations have worked out well for me. Never made a ton of money but I've gone on a couple of vacations thanks to it. Usually you know who you're dealing with so charge accordingly.

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.
- droobles 6y ago
  I assume yes because of your deep knowledge related to the package, whereas they don't have to spend time ramping up an in house dev to learn the ins and outs of it.

gonzo41 6y ago

Can you just change the license terms on your next update to say, if your market cap reported in the FY is over threshold set by this license then you have to pay a flat fee of X.

ianbooker 6y ago

Offer paid support. Most managers in businesses love to outsource accountability for cash. The trick is to not also take in their work (i.e. for integration).

muttled 6y ago
Are there any tricks to not getting entangled in the integration web? I could think maybe keep some references on hand of people who do integration work and refer them instead whenever the topic comes up?
- agustif 6y ago
  Run a partner program and get a cut.

pmoriarty 6y ago

Some other ideas: 1 - Charge for support. 2 - Put a Patreon and/or Paypal link prominently on the front page of the website for your product, and clearly and politely ask for financial support. Often people want to help out financially, but they don't see an easy and convenient way to do so. This is one way to let them know how they can. 3 - Consider running Kickstarter campaigns to add new features. See the successful Magit kickstarter[1] for a perfect model of how this was done for a very popular open source project. [1] - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681258897/its-magit-the-magical-git-client https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681258897/its-magit-th...

amelius 6y ago
> Often people want to help out financially, but they don't see an easy and convenient way to do so. Except people who use your product (engineers) have one extra hurdle: they need an OK from the financial department, and I suppose that this hurdle is often quite big.

jahewson 6y ago

Sponsorship, etc. linked to broader goals, such as features, better docs. Reach out to businesses with a positive message: what can we offer if you help us out? Showcase your sponsors, build a small community.

klohto 6y ago

Consulting or support. State it clearly on the project page and make sure you have a correct license. You need be aware if the library choice in said enterprises is a must-have or nice-to-have. I wouldn’t bet on corp. manager freeing a budget for a non-critical library. Also, while handling tickets, you can politely explain the user the paid support or consulting if they need it ASAP or require more support. This will can get the manager’s attention more than just “let’s support this guy because we use it”. As a last resort, you could consider paywalling new features and improvements. Or basically creating paid downstream product with a support and implement changes to the upstream. Sounds awful but that’s basically what most open-source companies do to keep new products alive :)

wackget 6y ago

Which library is it?

victor106 6y ago

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will consider offering consulting support. I just wish there was an open source license that basically says "its free to use but if your company makes more than x billion of dollars in profit then you have to pay $x per month/year."

mhh__ 6y ago
If you offer GPL/Commercial dual licensing then that basically is the case because large companies generally don't have lawyer-approval for GPL in their codebases (not always but as a rule of thumb they don't like the GPL). I think the aforementioned model is the best one for the longevity of an open source project - If you want to use my work for free, then give something back to the project (your changes) but if you don't want to do that then please support it financially.
- victor106 6y ago
  Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much. I hope this is beneficial for others in the same boat as me.
oh_sigh 6y ago
You could just write that term into a modified BSD license or some such. It wouldn't be Open Source at that point but it would get your point across. Enforcement would be difficult but you'd really only need to rely on the rule following behavior of a few big corps
- amelius 6y ago
  Sounds like a good idea, theoretically, making those BigCorps pay an open-source tax :) I wonder if that sort of discrimination is allowed though. I also wonder if package bundlers like Ubuntu would consider to bundle the project with their distros, if it has such a license slapped on it.

cbm-vic-20 6y ago

CKEditor (https://ckeditor.com/ https://ckeditor.com/) releases their product using the GPL license. Most large business avoid the GPL since they don't want to release their own code in accordance with the GPL. CKSource, the company that releases CKEditor, sells commercial licences to those companies, and will issue free licenses to GPL-incompatible open source projects. https://ckeditor.com/pricing/ https://ckeditor.com/pricing/

lifeisstillgood 6y ago
Can you release the same code under two licenses?
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  If you hold sufficient copyright to do so (e.g. you wrote all the code), yeah. Licenses are a gift, not an obligation.
thrownaway954 6y ago
THIS RIGHT HERE. the best ways i know of to make money doing OSS is charging for support and selling a commercial license so that enterprises can keep their code changes private.
benkaiser 6y ago
Can confirm, a team I used to work on in Microsoft pays $$ to use CKEditor in their product.
amelius 6y ago
This seems to be against the spirit of the GPL, however.

stubish 6y ago

You might have some luck with Tidelift (https://tidelift.com/about/lifter https://tidelift.com/about/lifter). I get pizza money every month for a long time top-20 (by download count) Python package, which isn't much, but I never expected anything so fine.

mperham 6y ago

Easiest is to license it as GPL or AGPL, sell a commercial license.

KMnO4 6y ago
Seems like that would do a lot of harm to your project. GPL isn't the only way to restrict commercial use. It's definitely the best way to annoy people working on non-commercial OSS with any other license though.

wizzwizz4 6y ago

How about asking them to sponsor it? And as part of the sponsorship, they get to schedule meetings (no more than 30 minutes a day, perhaps?) where they can tell you how they're using the library, so you can consider that when making changes. So long as it's clear you have no obligation to re-write the library especially for them, will this work?

stjohnswarts 6y ago

charging for support and giving companies MIT style license with their name attached as exclusive licensee for that version is the best way that I've found. New features and customizations have worked out well for me. Never made a ton of money but I've gone on a couple of vacations thanks to it. Usually you know who you're dealing with so charge accordingly.