16 ms·

How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

734 points by nephics 6y ago

clcaev 6y ago
[revision] In the comments section, following the article, she notes the extensions are open source, distributed when purchased. The license used for these extensions is not specified. Thank you for pronoun correction.
- hideo7746 6y ago
  *she
- tasogare 6y ago
  *she as someone who read the full article would notice.
  - 4ggr0 6y ago
    You actually read the articles on HN, and don't just form an opinion and write a comment after reading the headline alone? Pha, blasphemy. EDIT: I forgot that I'm not on Reddit, sorry. I will stop making jokes.
- lemarchr 6y ago
  > It made me the the confident woman I am today ... > nemiah posted to Indie Women on March 5, 2021
- jpetso 6y ago
  Quoting the author from the comments: > Yes, the plugins are open source, too. Customers can test what they will get in an online demo which is available on my website. > They get the functionality as well as the code after they bought the extension in my shop.
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    This is a bit confusing to me. They sell the plugins, but also the plugins are licensed that a customer can redistribute them to other customers legally? At first it sounded like 'open core' with the plugins not being open source, but if the plugins are open source too... I guess people pay for them, priced modestly, just for the convenience and support?
    - everybodyknows 6y ago
      >convenience and support Also initial access, and updates. Extensions are not mentioned on the free download page ... https://www.open3a.de/page-Download https://www.open3a.de/page-Download ... rather, pay-per-download: >If someone wants advanced features, I have a shop! In my shop the users can buy many of the extensions I have developed over the years. The prices are reasonable and start at 20€ (~$24) up to around 80€ (~$96) or so. The price contains updates for this extension for one year which means the next two versions. https://www.open3a.de/page-Plugins https://www.open3a.de/page-Plugins Apparently German businesses aren’t much interested in running bootleg copies of modestly-priced a la carte extensions.
      - jrochkind1 6y ago
        Yep, that makes sense, except as far as semantics, there would be nothing "bootleg" about it -- if they are licensed AGPL, that means anyone who gets it has a license to redistribute it to others under the same license, all totally above the board and legal. Right? That's something the AGPL license, that the author has chosen, gives you the right to do. I think this kind of mismatch stays under the radar when the stakes are pretty low, they probably aren't making tons of money off of this. If they were, someone else might try to get into the game. And if the pricing of the extension was a lot higher, more would probably use it (entirely legally) without paying.
protomyth 6y ago
In 2021 I recently launched my newest product: It's called open3ABox and it's a raspberry pi with open3A pre-installed which I deliver to my customers who have not the technical skills for their own server but don't want a cloud version either. It's fully remote managed and monitored by me This would be an interesting model for quite a few services. It reminds me of Ubiquity's cloud key. I wish some government grant contractors would try it.
- mikehollinger 6y ago
  Yup. That raspberry pi with stuff on it is a clever way of addressing a wider market. :-) If you’re clever or worried about business continuity you can learn from the practices of some enterprise it providers and add built in self checks, call home, and even charge for preventative maintenance. For example, “We noticed your dongle is overheating / having flash issues / whatever and not running optimally. Here’s a replacement.” Or - “we noticed that your dongle hasn’t been used in a while. Is it ok?”
  - myth2018 6y ago
    That would be cool indeed. Besides, depending on the reliability of the available internet connection, it might be also useful (and easy) to add an embedded mobile connection as a fail over. I know a guy who had some issues for that reason. The quality of the customer's LAN was extremely poor, but the customer (out of ignorance, bad faith or both, it wasn't clear) always blamed his software.
- tyingq 6y ago
  I'd be a bit wary of something as important as invoices on the Rpi storage though. Hopefully there's some automatic backup.
  - javajosh 6y ago
    Or buy two or more put them on the same subnet and let them replicate. More money!
mosaic_school 6y ago
Please correct me if I'm wrong but this is not how I understand the meaning of "open source software". It sounds rather like customers get source access. Do they have the right to sell the source code or re-release it in any way by following an open source license? ( https://opensource.org/licenses https://opensource.org/licenses ) P.S. I'm not criticizing your business model or anyone elses.
- nephics 6y ago
  As far as I can tell it is AGPL licensed PHP code, you can download the code, run it, and modify/fork it freely. Code is open source, but it is not developed in the open.
  - yakubin 6y ago
    The article doesn't mention GPL. It's unlikely that this code is GPL-licensed. Moreover, yeah, probably the customer can modify the code, but can they resell it or share it with someone else for free? If not, it's not open source. From "The Open Source Definition"[1]: > The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. [1]: <https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd> UPDATE: it seems it is licensed under AGPLv3. So it is open source. Interesting.
    - monsieurbanana 6y ago
      I'm sure I've spend less time downloading the zip, opening it, and seeing a "agpl.txt" file than you did writting that comment.
      - yakubin 6y ago
        I don't see a link to it in the article. I've only noticed where it is after another commenter linked to it.
    - 6y ago
loloquwowndueo 6y ago
The demo site is in German; a language selector is not obviously findable. It’s also excruciatingly slow to load! “Let the software speak for itself” - well, it did - if I were evaluating invoicing software I’d go look elsewhere mainly based on this very poor first impression. Could certainly use some optimization / speed up.
- tasogare 6y ago
  > The demo site is in German The target market is probably Germany. The post mentions amount of money in euros, but never other currencies used in English-speaking countries. It make sense to not internationalize the website if the product doesn’t fit the international market (I bet invoices have different legal requirements everywhere).
  - loloquwowndueo 6y ago
    And yet the blog article is in English and it was promoted in an English site (hacker news :)
    - scbrg 6y ago
      The "blog" article is in English because it's posted in an English speaking community (who are presumably more interested in the story than the software itself). It's "promoted" on HN by someone other than the author, it seems.
      - nemiah 6y ago
        No, wasn't me. I actually decided against posting the link here.
    - nvr219 6y ago
      The blog is about the author's experience not about the software itself
  - christogreeff 6y ago
antattack 6y ago
"I have a free version of open3A which is as useful as possible without any limits but of course it is missing advanced functionality. This version gets full support by me via phone and email." I think that providing support for free version is somewhat unique, however it does make sense - the longer people use her software the more likely they purchase add-on or subscription.
- imhoguy 6y ago
  It depends on customer base. This is B2B solution so I assume when she picks up the phone the caller is someone who values own time. That way she can hear about frequent needs of users who don't buy the thing when it lacks some essential feature, also could upsell existing extensions or the boxed version. Customers often have no idea of potential the software offers. Simply it is support+marketing+sales number.
  - nemiah 6y ago
    I do this because I'm in it for the long run. Sure, maybe it won't pay off, but my "first directive" is, to get people to use my open3A. If they've put all their data in it and miss some feature in the future it is more probable that they will just buy it from me instead of going through the hassle of moving to another solution. If they have a good support experience that just gives them a better feeling with my software.
    - bigiain 6y ago
      I think you've hit a really nice market niche too. If you get a support call it's from someone having difficulty extracting money from someone else because invoicing isn't working. So long as you solve that problem for them they'll associate your software as being directly valuable to their bottom line, and that'll make them much more likely to agree to pay money for it. I suspect that approach wouldn't work nearly so well if the connection between the software you're selling and the money rolling in to their bank account wasn't quite so obvious. I probably wouldn't try such a generous free version of, say, wiki software or document management or backups - things that are way too easy to consider as "cost centres"...
williesleg 6y ago
I make my living using open source software. Now I'll write a blog with ads and profit!
meijer 6y ago
Pretty great. This is how I would like to work, too. Of course, it would be nice to know how much money the author makes with this product...
- jasonlotito 6y ago
  Clicking through, there is this page: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/open3a https://www.indiehackers.com/product/open3a It mentions 9k/mo.
pietrovismara 6y ago
Following the recent events, wait until multinational corporation x comes, repackages your software as a managed solution, hosted on their infrastructure and resells it through their channels.
- fsflover 6y ago
  Multinational corporations typically are very afraid of AGPLv3.
  - pietrovismara 6y ago
    See my comment as a snarky reply to the recent HN threads about the aws/elastic debate, not as a serious contribution. Although on a more serious note, I can clearly remember self appointed knights of FOSS claiming on those threads that AGPL is bad because it harms adoption. I see it more as a form of protection against corporate exploitation, apparently OP does too.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  Online invoicing is hardly an area unexplored by large corporate SaaS companies. The world is a big place and it seems he's found a niche he can make money in.
kgwgk 6y ago
Potential next episode: someone is taking advantage of my open source software, it's getting harder to sell it and earn a living.
- jasonlotito 6y ago
  The software is licensed under the AGPL. So, that would be an interesting article to see if someone was taking the code and repackaging it.
- Avshalom 6y ago
  She doesn't mention when it started paying her all her bills exactly but the cloud version started in 2013 and the CD from 2010 so presumably it's been her full time living for at least most of a decade. Even if it all comes apart tomorrow that's still a pretty good run for any single product/sole proprietor-ish small business.
- leovailati 6y ago
  Just wondering here, is there any way to protect oneself from that type of situation while at the same time keeping the source code open? Obviously, the name and logo are trademarked, but a third party could rebrand the program while using the same underlying source code.
  - unnouinceput 6y ago
    Open source == no protection. You rely on the morals of your customers. At any time somebody bigger than you can take your free source, modify it, make it better because they have already a base and sell it as closed proprietary software and you can't do anything about it.
    - dwohnitmok 6y ago
      > sell it as closed proprietary software This is not true for all open source licenses. Copyleft licenses such as the GPL and its variants prevent this. Someone can distribute your software instead of you and thereby lock you out of any profits there, especially if they undercut your price (in the limit case they can distribute your paid software for free), but certain open source licenses prevent retroactive locking as proprietary software.
II2II 6y ago
Things that I like about her account: it is sounds like a modest success story with an end that is within reach of more people and places more emphasis on the value of work instead of getting rich quick. The part about her product being open source will also appeal to a certain audience.
yboris 6y ago
I sell my MIT open source Video Hub App for $5 ($3.50 goes to a cost-effective charity - it's charityware). Over the 3 years it's resulted in over $9000 donated to protect people from malaria. Public: https://videohubapp.com/en/ https://videohubapp.com/en/ GitHub: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App Charityware: https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-proceeds-from-software-purchases-e48e66a5d1a https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-pro...
- jjice 6y ago
  I was actually looking for something just like this since I won't have access to my Jellyfin server for a while. This looks perfect.
  - xnyan 6y ago
    You should buy this guy’s application, but also keep in mind you can put Jellyfin on any Mac/Linux/Windows box and connect to it locally from your web browser. Obviously you’d also have to move any video you want to watch offline to your travel computer, but that’s true for any offline viewing.
- mraza007 6y ago
  Pretty cool product. I have a very similar product but my question is that how did you convinced the users to pay for the product if its already free
  - yboris 6y ago
    It's not "free" in the sense that there's a download button for it. 99.9% of the people wouldn't be readily able to build the app from source. Given I've spent 3 years building it, I feel comfortable selling it for this price. When I first released the app I didn't have the source code available; so it's more like a "commercial product" with the source code available if anyone is interested.
    - 6y ago
ryanmarsh 6y ago
I made a great deal of money for a few years providing training and support for the founders of a popular mature open source project. There's no customer success team for open source software, I don't care how good the community is. A significant chunk of the money charged for my services went back to the founders to continue their work. This is a fantastic model for open source. I encourage more people to connect with the founders of popular projects and arrange a system whereby you can offer training and support on their behalf and in their name (obviously they should vet you). I'm happy to discuss the particulars of this, including how to sell training and support, how to handle contracts, logistics, all of it. I know this business well and I think it is a net good for all involved. Email is in by bio.
- kfk 6y ago
  This makes sense. I am working with dask and it will become harder to keep this running in our “enterprise” aws setup as it’s open source with no vetted credible support company behind.
okprod 6y ago
If it's AGPL it's free software, not open source
- CameronBanga 6y ago
  The Open Source Initiative recognizes AGPL as an open source license -> https://opensource.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0 https://opensource.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0
  - okprod 6y ago
    The FSF recognizes AGPL as a free software license.
    - scbrg 6y ago
      Where did you get the idea that open source and free software are mutually exclusive?
      - okprod 6y ago
        Free software is an ethical imperative; open source is a business model. Not my idea, someone called RMS came up with that, copyleft, etc.
- fsflover 6y ago
  It's both, i.e. FLOSS.
  - okprod 6y ago
    No, it's not both. Open source is a business model. AGPL is a free software license. Look at Wikipedia, or ask the license holder, the FSF.
    - orangeshark 6y ago
      It is both. Here[0] is GNU comparing them. The Open Source Initiative also has their definition[1] of Open Source. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html [1] https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
koonsolo 6y ago
I wonder how much benefit there was from open sourcing the project: in other words, how many contributors helped out, or how many customers would refuse to buy it when it's not open source. Asking this because sometimes I also wonder if I should open source my project, but I have my doubts on how much you can gain from it (apart from the nice feeling of contributing to open source ;))
- gregmac 6y ago
  > I wonder how much benefit there was from open sourcing the project: in other words, how many contributors helped out, or how many customers would refuse to buy it when it's not open source. Contributors is easy to judge, but the second bit is not. It includes people you'll never even hear from. For me, the big question I ask is basically "What are the chances this software becomes unavailable in the future and what's my escape plan?" These two weigh against each other -- if it's a non-critical tool and the plan is "go back to doing it the old way, with near zero business impact" then I don't really care about the chances it disappears a whole lot. If it's "Start a several-months migration effort while the business is crippled" then suddenly that first bit becomes incredibly important. I consider chances a small (especially one-person) company disappears is fairly high. Same for a VC-funded startup (along with the chances they kill or pivot away from the product, which is effectively the same thing). Open source means it never really becomes "unavailable": It might be costly (eg if I have to fund maintenance on my own) but it still provides low risk of crippling my business. When I'm considering new software, the non-OSS stuff run by small companies just naturally goes to the bottom of the list for exactly this reason. If I go with something higher up on that list, that company won't even know they were being considered, let alone why I didn't pick them.
- nemiah 6y ago
  Sometimes a client sends me some code to put in my version for future updates. But other than that, I don't work with contributions. It's more the feeling for me, yes :)
  - galaxyLogic 6y ago
    I'm wondering, if someone sends me code to include in my project, how can I be sure they are the rightful copyright owners of that piece of code? Also what kind of legal liability it might put me in if I then publish that code as open source?
ThinkBeat 6y ago
No. You sell additional premium extension to provide needed left out of the open-source offering. You sell cloud hosting and on prem hosting. There is nothing at all wrong with that. That you have built a business where you make a living from software you wrote is awesome. I wish I could.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Cu3PO42 6y ago
  Given that the main software is AGPL, the extensions would also be open source.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - clarkevans 6y ago
    > Given that the main software is AGPL, the extensions would also be open source. This is not necessarily true. If you are the sole copyright owner, you can have your main product be AGPL and sell proprietary extensions; there's no reason why you need to enforce your copyright against yourself. Alternatively, your combined product could be under a proprietary license that is not the AGPL.
  - nemiah 6y ago
    Yes, the extensions are AGPL also.
- NoThisIsMe 6y ago
  Yes. It's right there in bold: the customer is provided with the source code of the extension when they purchase it. So long as the user is free to study, modify, and distribute this source code, then it's FOSS.
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    Maybe it's just because the interface is a shop? Or because the extensions are automatically packaged.
scottlamb 6y ago
Kudos to the author! I don't get this part: > In 2021 I recently launched my newest product: It's called open3ABox and it's a raspberry pi with open3A pre-installed which I deliver to my customers who have not the technical skills for their own server but don't want a cloud version either. It's fully remote managed and monitored by me more steady income, yay When people object to cloud (SaaS really), I tend to think it's about what you could variously describe as ownership, control, privacy, and security. They want to be the only ones who can access their data. They want updates to happen on their schedule. If you want the developer to manage and monitor your installation, why not use a hosted version? Another reason is bandwidth, but I wouldn't expect that to be a significant consideration for invoicing software.
- twodave 6y ago
  My thoughts exactly--Having a fleet of client-side machinery open to the Internet sounds like a larger overall risk footprint than having one hosted solution. I'm guessing a bit part of this is just customer psychology and lack of education.
  - imhoguy 6y ago
    Why do you think it is opened to the Internet? May be just a box behind a NAT calling home and/or be part of closed VPN swarm. I would love to hear how the management part got implemented.
    - nemiah 6y ago
      The management works like this: Every open3ABox has an open websocket connection to my server. I do the monitoring over this connection and for updates and support I tell the box over the websocket connection to forward a port via ssh to my server. The port will be automatically closed by the open3ABox after three hours. This means no constantly open port and an encrypted connection where only my server is allowed to do a remote function execution (get monitoring values, open port, etc.) on the box.
      - 6y ago
heeen2 6y ago
Similar project for time tracking and invoice generation: https://www.kimai.org/ https://www.kimai.org/
a2tech 6y ago
I wonder if they would do better with an English version of their website? I was looking for something exactly like this early last year and I found no mention of it (and googling in English doesn't bring it up now either).
- wila 6y ago
  Someone in the comments asked about this. She is fine with only targeting the German market, it is big enough for her.
alexdowad 6y ago
If nemiah is reading these comments... well done! Loved your story!
- nemiah 6y ago
  Actually I am, thank you! Having quite some fun now :D
gnulinux 6y ago
ITT: People who didn't read the article, argue how GPL would make this business model impossible, not realizing code in the article is AGPL licensed. smh, I expected better from HN.
- dang 6y ago
  The trouble with comments like this is that they make the thread even worse by amplifying what they're complaining about (and adding a layer of meta on top). It's much better to dampen bad stuff by downvoting/flagging it and/or amplify good stuff by contributing interesting things.
vmception 6y ago
I thought this would be about the repository maintainers of obscure but used dependencies, who then that sell to random passerbys who then make the dependency malicious Because I would like to read about that experience
kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y ago
>Here comes the crucial part: My shop remembers all the extensions a customer bought and every time she downloads her version it puts all the paid for extensions together in a zip file for the update. This is how I sell open source. The customer gets the code (and functionality) after she bought it. Why is this unnecessarily gendered?
rambojazz 6y ago
> The customer gets the code (and functionality) after she bought it. What are the licenses of the software and the extensions in the shop? Is this one of those free-core/proprietary-plugins model?
- jackson1442 6y ago
  According to one of the author's other comments, they are also licensed as AGPL. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26428460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26428460
consultSKI 6y ago
Love it. The raspberry pi is a cool addition.
galaxyLogic 6y ago
This seems like an interesting business-model, charge for the open source software because it is worth the money for your customers, and nobody could do the same as cheaply, and because you fly under the radar. But assume profits are increasing and competitors arise. Then what would you do? How would you compete with them? Would you try to make the publicly distributed software less maintainable by for instance reducing the amount of documentation that comes with it? You might have multiple versions of your source-code, some with comments and some without. You could then choose whether to distribute the version with code-comments or one without. You might go further and apply some kind of "minifier" to your source making it harder to understand and thus modify. As far as I understand it GPL gives rights to the users of the software but puts few if any restrictions on the provider of the software. So would it therefore make sense to distribute (only) a minified version of your source-code? That would make it easier for you to compete against your competition.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

734 points by nephics 6y ago

[revision] In the comments section, following the article, she notes the extensions are open source, distributed when purchased. The license used for these extensions is not specified. Thank you for pronoun correction.

hideo7746 6y ago
*she
tasogare 6y ago
*she as someone who read the full article would notice.
- 4ggr0 6y ago
  You actually read the articles on HN, and don't just form an opinion and write a comment after reading the headline alone? Pha, blasphemy. EDIT: I forgot that I'm not on Reddit, sorry. I will stop making jokes.
lemarchr 6y ago
> It made me the the confident woman I am today ... > nemiah posted to Indie Women on March 5, 2021
jpetso 6y ago
Quoting the author from the comments: > Yes, the plugins are open source, too. Customers can test what they will get in an online demo which is available on my website. > They get the functionality as well as the code after they bought the extension in my shop.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  This is a bit confusing to me. They sell the plugins, but also the plugins are licensed that a customer can redistribute them to other customers legally? At first it sounded like 'open core' with the plugins not being open source, but if the plugins are open source too... I guess people pay for them, priced modestly, just for the convenience and support?
  - everybodyknows 6y ago
    >convenience and support Also initial access, and updates. Extensions are not mentioned on the free download page ... https://www.open3a.de/page-Download https://www.open3a.de/page-Download ... rather, pay-per-download: >If someone wants advanced features, I have a shop! In my shop the users can buy many of the extensions I have developed over the years. The prices are reasonable and start at 20€ (~$24) up to around 80€ (~$96) or so. The price contains updates for this extension for one year which means the next two versions. https://www.open3a.de/page-Plugins https://www.open3a.de/page-Plugins Apparently German businesses aren’t much interested in running bootleg copies of modestly-priced a la carte extensions.
    - jrochkind1 6y ago
      Yep, that makes sense, except as far as semantics, there would be nothing "bootleg" about it -- if they are licensed AGPL, that means anyone who gets it has a license to redistribute it to others under the same license, all totally above the board and legal. Right? That's something the AGPL license, that the author has chosen, gives you the right to do. I think this kind of mismatch stays under the radar when the stakes are pretty low, they probably aren't making tons of money off of this. If they were, someone else might try to get into the game. And if the pricing of the extension was a lot higher, more would probably use it (entirely legally) without paying.

protomyth 6y ago

In 2021 I recently launched my newest product: It's called open3ABox and it's a raspberry pi with open3A pre-installed which I deliver to my customers who have not the technical skills for their own server but don't want a cloud version either. It's fully remote managed and monitored by me This would be an interesting model for quite a few services. It reminds me of Ubiquity's cloud key. I wish some government grant contractors would try it.

mikehollinger 6y ago
Yup. That raspberry pi with stuff on it is a clever way of addressing a wider market. :-) If you’re clever or worried about business continuity you can learn from the practices of some enterprise it providers and add built in self checks, call home, and even charge for preventative maintenance. For example, “We noticed your dongle is overheating / having flash issues / whatever and not running optimally. Here’s a replacement.” Or - “we noticed that your dongle hasn’t been used in a while. Is it ok?”
- myth2018 6y ago
  That would be cool indeed. Besides, depending on the reliability of the available internet connection, it might be also useful (and easy) to add an embedded mobile connection as a fail over. I know a guy who had some issues for that reason. The quality of the customer's LAN was extremely poor, but the customer (out of ignorance, bad faith or both, it wasn't clear) always blamed his software.
tyingq 6y ago
I'd be a bit wary of something as important as invoices on the Rpi storage though. Hopefully there's some automatic backup.
- javajosh 6y ago
  Or buy two or more put them on the same subnet and let them replicate. More money!

mosaic_school 6y ago

Please correct me if I'm wrong but this is not how I understand the meaning of "open source software". It sounds rather like customers get source access. Do they have the right to sell the source code or re-release it in any way by following an open source license? ( https://opensource.org/licenses https://opensource.org/licenses ) P.S. I'm not criticizing your business model or anyone elses.

nephics 6y ago
As far as I can tell it is AGPL licensed PHP code, you can download the code, run it, and modify/fork it freely. Code is open source, but it is not developed in the open.
- yakubin 6y ago
  The article doesn't mention GPL. It's unlikely that this code is GPL-licensed. Moreover, yeah, probably the customer can modify the code, but can they resell it or share it with someone else for free? If not, it's not open source. From "The Open Source Definition"[1]: > The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. [1]: <https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd> UPDATE: it seems it is licensed under AGPLv3. So it is open source. Interesting.
  - monsieurbanana 6y ago
    I'm sure I've spend less time downloading the zip, opening it, and seeing a "agpl.txt" file than you did writting that comment.
    - yakubin 6y ago
      I don't see a link to it in the article. I've only noticed where it is after another commenter linked to it.
  - 6y ago

loloquwowndueo 6y ago

The demo site is in German; a language selector is not obviously findable. It’s also excruciatingly slow to load! “Let the software speak for itself” - well, it did - if I were evaluating invoicing software I’d go look elsewhere mainly based on this very poor first impression. Could certainly use some optimization / speed up.

tasogare 6y ago
> The demo site is in German The target market is probably Germany. The post mentions amount of money in euros, but never other currencies used in English-speaking countries. It make sense to not internationalize the website if the product doesn’t fit the international market (I bet invoices have different legal requirements everywhere).
- loloquwowndueo 6y ago
  And yet the blog article is in English and it was promoted in an English site (hacker news :)
  - scbrg 6y ago
    The "blog" article is in English because it's posted in an English speaking community (who are presumably more interested in the story than the software itself). It's "promoted" on HN by someone other than the author, it seems.
    - nemiah 6y ago
      No, wasn't me. I actually decided against posting the link here.
  - nvr219 6y ago
    The blog is about the author's experience not about the software itself
- christogreeff 6y ago

antattack 6y ago

"I have a free version of open3A which is as useful as possible without any limits but of course it is missing advanced functionality. This version gets full support by me via phone and email." I think that providing support for free version is somewhat unique, however it does make sense - the longer people use her software the more likely they purchase add-on or subscription.

imhoguy 6y ago
It depends on customer base. This is B2B solution so I assume when she picks up the phone the caller is someone who values own time. That way she can hear about frequent needs of users who don't buy the thing when it lacks some essential feature, also could upsell existing extensions or the boxed version. Customers often have no idea of potential the software offers. Simply it is support+marketing+sales number.
- nemiah 6y ago
  I do this because I'm in it for the long run. Sure, maybe it won't pay off, but my "first directive" is, to get people to use my open3A. If they've put all their data in it and miss some feature in the future it is more probable that they will just buy it from me instead of going through the hassle of moving to another solution. If they have a good support experience that just gives them a better feeling with my software.
  - bigiain 6y ago
    I think you've hit a really nice market niche too. If you get a support call it's from someone having difficulty extracting money from someone else because invoicing isn't working. So long as you solve that problem for them they'll associate your software as being directly valuable to their bottom line, and that'll make them much more likely to agree to pay money for it. I suspect that approach wouldn't work nearly so well if the connection between the software you're selling and the money rolling in to their bank account wasn't quite so obvious. I probably wouldn't try such a generous free version of, say, wiki software or document management or backups - things that are way too easy to consider as "cost centres"...

williesleg 6y ago

I make my living using open source software. Now I'll write a blog with ads and profit!

meijer 6y ago

Pretty great. This is how I would like to work, too. Of course, it would be nice to know how much money the author makes with this product...

jasonlotito 6y ago
Clicking through, there is this page: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/open3a https://www.indiehackers.com/product/open3a It mentions 9k/mo.

pietrovismara 6y ago

Following the recent events, wait until multinational corporation x comes, repackages your software as a managed solution, hosted on their infrastructure and resells it through their channels.

fsflover 6y ago
Multinational corporations typically are very afraid of AGPLv3.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  See my comment as a snarky reply to the recent HN threads about the aws/elastic debate, not as a serious contribution. Although on a more serious note, I can clearly remember self appointed knights of FOSS claiming on those threads that AGPL is bad because it harms adoption. I see it more as a form of protection against corporate exploitation, apparently OP does too.
throwawayboise 6y ago
Online invoicing is hardly an area unexplored by large corporate SaaS companies. The world is a big place and it seems he's found a niche he can make money in.

kgwgk 6y ago

Potential next episode: someone is taking advantage of my open source software, it's getting harder to sell it and earn a living.

jasonlotito 6y ago
The software is licensed under the AGPL. So, that would be an interesting article to see if someone was taking the code and repackaging it.
Avshalom 6y ago
She doesn't mention when it started paying her all her bills exactly but the cloud version started in 2013 and the CD from 2010 so presumably it's been her full time living for at least most of a decade. Even if it all comes apart tomorrow that's still a pretty good run for any single product/sole proprietor-ish small business.
leovailati 6y ago
Just wondering here, is there any way to protect oneself from that type of situation while at the same time keeping the source code open? Obviously, the name and logo are trademarked, but a third party could rebrand the program while using the same underlying source code.
- unnouinceput 6y ago
  Open source == no protection. You rely on the morals of your customers. At any time somebody bigger than you can take your free source, modify it, make it better because they have already a base and sell it as closed proprietary software and you can't do anything about it.
  - dwohnitmok 6y ago
    > sell it as closed proprietary software This is not true for all open source licenses. Copyleft licenses such as the GPL and its variants prevent this. Someone can distribute your software instead of you and thereby lock you out of any profits there, especially if they undercut your price (in the limit case they can distribute your paid software for free), but certain open source licenses prevent retroactive locking as proprietary software.

II2II 6y ago

Things that I like about her account: it is sounds like a modest success story with an end that is within reach of more people and places more emphasis on the value of work instead of getting rich quick. The part about her product being open source will also appeal to a certain audience.

yboris 6y ago

I sell my MIT open source Video Hub App for $5 ($3.50 goes to a cost-effective charity - it's charityware). Over the 3 years it's resulted in over $9000 donated to protect people from malaria. Public: https://videohubapp.com/en/ https://videohubapp.com/en/ GitHub: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App Charityware: https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-proceeds-from-software-purchases-e48e66a5d1a https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-pro...

jjice 6y ago
I was actually looking for something just like this since I won't have access to my Jellyfin server for a while. This looks perfect.
- xnyan 6y ago
  You should buy this guy’s application, but also keep in mind you can put Jellyfin on any Mac/Linux/Windows box and connect to it locally from your web browser. Obviously you’d also have to move any video you want to watch offline to your travel computer, but that’s true for any offline viewing.
mraza007 6y ago
Pretty cool product. I have a very similar product but my question is that how did you convinced the users to pay for the product if its already free
- yboris 6y ago
  It's not "free" in the sense that there's a download button for it. 99.9% of the people wouldn't be readily able to build the app from source. Given I've spent 3 years building it, I feel comfortable selling it for this price. When I first released the app I didn't have the source code available; so it's more like a "commercial product" with the source code available if anyone is interested.
  - 6y ago

ryanmarsh 6y ago

I made a great deal of money for a few years providing training and support for the founders of a popular mature open source project. There's no customer success team for open source software, I don't care how good the community is. A significant chunk of the money charged for my services went back to the founders to continue their work. This is a fantastic model for open source. I encourage more people to connect with the founders of popular projects and arrange a system whereby you can offer training and support on their behalf and in their name (obviously they should vet you). I'm happy to discuss the particulars of this, including how to sell training and support, how to handle contracts, logistics, all of it. I know this business well and I think it is a net good for all involved. Email is in by bio.

kfk 6y ago
This makes sense. I am working with dask and it will become harder to keep this running in our “enterprise” aws setup as it’s open source with no vetted credible support company behind.

okprod 6y ago

If it's AGPL it's free software, not open source

CameronBanga 6y ago
The Open Source Initiative recognizes AGPL as an open source license -> https://opensource.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0 https://opensource.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0
- okprod 6y ago
  The FSF recognizes AGPL as a free software license.
  - scbrg 6y ago
    Where did you get the idea that open source and free software are mutually exclusive?
    - okprod 6y ago
      Free software is an ethical imperative; open source is a business model. Not my idea, someone called RMS came up with that, copyleft, etc.
fsflover 6y ago
It's both, i.e. FLOSS.
- okprod 6y ago
  No, it's not both. Open source is a business model. AGPL is a free software license. Look at Wikipedia, or ask the license holder, the FSF.
  - orangeshark 6y ago
    It is both. Here[0] is GNU comparing them. The Open Source Initiative also has their definition[1] of Open Source. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html [1] https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd

koonsolo 6y ago

I wonder how much benefit there was from open sourcing the project: in other words, how many contributors helped out, or how many customers would refuse to buy it when it's not open source. Asking this because sometimes I also wonder if I should open source my project, but I have my doubts on how much you can gain from it (apart from the nice feeling of contributing to open source ;))

gregmac 6y ago
> I wonder how much benefit there was from open sourcing the project: in other words, how many contributors helped out, or how many customers would refuse to buy it when it's not open source. Contributors is easy to judge, but the second bit is not. It includes people you'll never even hear from. For me, the big question I ask is basically "What are the chances this software becomes unavailable in the future and what's my escape plan?" These two weigh against each other -- if it's a non-critical tool and the plan is "go back to doing it the old way, with near zero business impact" then I don't really care about the chances it disappears a whole lot. If it's "Start a several-months migration effort while the business is crippled" then suddenly that first bit becomes incredibly important. I consider chances a small (especially one-person) company disappears is fairly high. Same for a VC-funded startup (along with the chances they kill or pivot away from the product, which is effectively the same thing). Open source means it never really becomes "unavailable": It might be costly (eg if I have to fund maintenance on my own) but it still provides low risk of crippling my business. When I'm considering new software, the non-OSS stuff run by small companies just naturally goes to the bottom of the list for exactly this reason. If I go with something higher up on that list, that company won't even know they were being considered, let alone why I didn't pick them.
nemiah 6y ago
Sometimes a client sends me some code to put in my version for future updates. But other than that, I don't work with contributions. It's more the feeling for me, yes :)
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  I'm wondering, if someone sends me code to include in my project, how can I be sure they are the rightful copyright owners of that piece of code? Also what kind of legal liability it might put me in if I then publish that code as open source?

ThinkBeat 6y ago

No. You sell additional premium extension to provide needed left out of the open-source offering. You sell cloud hosting and on prem hosting. There is nothing at all wrong with that. That you have built a business where you make a living from software you wrote is awesome. I wish I could.

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Cu3PO42 6y ago
Given that the main software is AGPL, the extensions would also be open source.
- deleted 6y ago
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- clarkevans 6y ago
  > Given that the main software is AGPL, the extensions would also be open source. This is not necessarily true. If you are the sole copyright owner, you can have your main product be AGPL and sell proprietary extensions; there's no reason why you need to enforce your copyright against yourself. Alternatively, your combined product could be under a proprietary license that is not the AGPL.
- nemiah 6y ago
  Yes, the extensions are AGPL also.
NoThisIsMe 6y ago
Yes. It's right there in bold: the customer is provided with the source code of the extension when they purchase it. So long as the user is free to study, modify, and distribute this source code, then it's FOSS.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  Maybe it's just because the interface is a shop? Or because the extensions are automatically packaged.

scottlamb 6y ago

Kudos to the author! I don't get this part: > In 2021 I recently launched my newest product: It's called open3ABox and it's a raspberry pi with open3A pre-installed which I deliver to my customers who have not the technical skills for their own server but don't want a cloud version either. It's fully remote managed and monitored by me more steady income, yay When people object to cloud (SaaS really), I tend to think it's about what you could variously describe as ownership, control, privacy, and security. They want to be the only ones who can access their data. They want updates to happen on their schedule. If you want the developer to manage and monitor your installation, why not use a hosted version? Another reason is bandwidth, but I wouldn't expect that to be a significant consideration for invoicing software.

twodave 6y ago
My thoughts exactly--Having a fleet of client-side machinery open to the Internet sounds like a larger overall risk footprint than having one hosted solution. I'm guessing a bit part of this is just customer psychology and lack of education.
- imhoguy 6y ago
  Why do you think it is opened to the Internet? May be just a box behind a NAT calling home and/or be part of closed VPN swarm. I would love to hear how the management part got implemented.
  - nemiah 6y ago
    The management works like this: Every open3ABox has an open websocket connection to my server. I do the monitoring over this connection and for updates and support I tell the box over the websocket connection to forward a port via ssh to my server. The port will be automatically closed by the open3ABox after three hours. This means no constantly open port and an encrypted connection where only my server is allowed to do a remote function execution (get monitoring values, open port, etc.) on the box.
    - 6y ago

heeen2 6y ago

Similar project for time tracking and invoice generation: https://www.kimai.org/ https://www.kimai.org/

a2tech 6y ago

I wonder if they would do better with an English version of their website? I was looking for something exactly like this early last year and I found no mention of it (and googling in English doesn't bring it up now either).

wila 6y ago
Someone in the comments asked about this. She is fine with only targeting the German market, it is big enough for her.

alexdowad 6y ago

If nemiah is reading these comments... well done! Loved your story!

nemiah 6y ago
Actually I am, thank you! Having quite some fun now :D

gnulinux 6y ago

ITT: People who didn't read the article, argue how GPL would make this business model impossible, not realizing code in the article is AGPL licensed. smh, I expected better from HN.

dang 6y ago
The trouble with comments like this is that they make the thread even worse by amplifying what they're complaining about (and adding a layer of meta on top). It's much better to dampen bad stuff by downvoting/flagging it and/or amplify good stuff by contributing interesting things.

vmception 6y ago

I thought this would be about the repository maintainers of obscure but used dependencies, who then that sell to random passerbys who then make the dependency malicious Because I would like to read about that experience

kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y ago

>Here comes the crucial part: My shop remembers all the extensions a customer bought and every time she downloads her version it puts all the paid for extensions together in a zip file for the update. This is how I sell open source. The customer gets the code (and functionality) after she bought it. Why is this unnecessarily gendered?

rambojazz 6y ago

> The customer gets the code (and functionality) after she bought it. What are the licenses of the software and the extensions in the shop? Is this one of those free-core/proprietary-plugins model?

jackson1442 6y ago
According to one of the author's other comments, they are also licensed as AGPL. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26428460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26428460

consultSKI 6y ago

Love it. The raspberry pi is a cool addition.

galaxyLogic 6y ago

This seems like an interesting business-model, charge for the open source software because it is worth the money for your customers, and nobody could do the same as cheaply, and because you fly under the radar. But assume profits are increasing and competitors arise. Then what would you do? How would you compete with them? Would you try to make the publicly distributed software less maintainable by for instance reducing the amount of documentation that comes with it? You might have multiple versions of your source-code, some with comments and some without. You could then choose whether to distribute the version with code-comments or one without. You might go further and apply some kind of "minifier" to your source making it harder to understand and thus modify. As far as I understand it GPL gives rights to the users of the software but puts few if any restrictions on the provider of the software. So would it therefore make sense to distribute (only) a minified version of your source-code? That would make it easier for you to compete against your competition.

deleted 6y ago

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