The best way to make money in software at the moment is to sell subscription for what most considered a "valuable value-add" at the top end of the stack. Examp

The best way to make money in software at the moment is to sell subscription for what most considered a "valuable value-add" at the top end of the stack. Examples of value-add: * Much better UI or API experience. * Much better installation or maintenance process. * Much better scalability story when data becomes huge. So unfortunately, it is usually hard for low-level tools to make money (except databases. They have a clear path to make money). But there's a prior art to your effort: Aerospike is a legit company now but it started from a proxy & SQL layer OSS project on top of Redis. See: * https://code.google.com/archive/p/redisql/wikis/CommandReference.wiki https://code.google.com/archive/p/redisql/wikis/CommandRefer... * https://code.google.com/archive/p/alchemydatabase/ https://code.google.com/archive/p/alchemydatabase/ But... what does giving up mean here? * The opportunity to make lots of money in a hot market? * The opportunity to get a great health insurance? Which you will need when you have a kid. * The peace of mind knowing that paycheck will always come in every 2 weeks?