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As someone who wants to write open source but needs to be able to capture some financial value from doing that to be able to make it sustainable, what model do

As someone who wants to write open source but needs to be able to capture some financial value from doing that to be able to make it sustainable, what model do you prefer? My current thoughts lean towards a fully functional open source product with a HashiCorp style BSL and commercial licensing for teams above a size threshold.

danryan 1y ago
Sell support.
- 1dom 1y ago
  I can't imagine that works very well for relatively small, simple, functional or intuitive projects though. Incentives wise, is it possible to sell reverse support: extracting payment for all the times the product works so well that support isn't needed?
- sudodevnull 1y ago
  That doesn't work. My day job is at scenario working on NATS and I can tell you 99.9% of people don't pay for support
  - CuriouslyC 1y ago
    As a NATS user, I can say that's mostly because it just works and when it doesn't it's pretty easy to figure out :)
    - sudodevnull 1y ago
      yep, and you'd think someone that has seen that would pick a different model... idk, ngmi
- abirch 1y ago
  Selling support can be rough. I talked with the developer of PyMol. Many corporations wouldn't buy licenses and those that would pay for support wanted support for hardware that was 2 or 3 generations old. Gentle reminder: please encourage your corporation to pay for open source support whenever possible.
mekoka 1y ago
Some solo dev projects are used as a platform to sell books, training, ads, speaking engagement, consulting, and development.
bdcravens 1y ago
I think the open core model is fine, and the most financially sustainable. Just be up front about it from day 1. I don't think the honor system for licensing will get you the results you're wanting.
zem 1y ago
it depends strongly on why you want to write open source. if you like the idea of putting source code out into the world for other people to use and benefit from then go ahead and use whatever mix of open source and proprietary code you like, just be up front that that's what you are doing. if you want to promise open source software simply to attract the mindshare and users who habitually ignore anything that isn't open source, trying to capture financial value may well be infeasible unless some rare confluence of stars lines up for you. the key is in the word "capture" - capturing the value implies making sure it goes to you rather than to someone else, and that means imposing restrictions that will simply piss those same users off.

danryan 1y ago

Sell support.

1dom 1y ago
I can't imagine that works very well for relatively small, simple, functional or intuitive projects though. Incentives wise, is it possible to sell reverse support: extracting payment for all the times the product works so well that support isn't needed?
sudodevnull 1y ago
That doesn't work. My day job is at scenario working on NATS and I can tell you 99.9% of people don't pay for support
- CuriouslyC 1y ago
  As a NATS user, I can say that's mostly because it just works and when it doesn't it's pretty easy to figure out :)
  - sudodevnull 1y ago
    yep, and you'd think someone that has seen that would pick a different model... idk, ngmi
abirch 1y ago
Selling support can be rough. I talked with the developer of PyMol. Many corporations wouldn't buy licenses and those that would pay for support wanted support for hardware that was 2 or 3 generations old. Gentle reminder: please encourage your corporation to pay for open source support whenever possible.

mekoka 1y ago

Some solo dev projects are used as a platform to sell books, training, ads, speaking engagement, consulting, and development.

bdcravens 1y ago

I think the open core model is fine, and the most financially sustainable. Just be up front about it from day 1. I don't think the honor system for licensing will get you the results you're wanting.

zem 1y ago

it depends strongly on why you want to write open source. if you like the idea of putting source code out into the world for other people to use and benefit from then go ahead and use whatever mix of open source and proprietary code you like, just be up front that that's what you are doing. if you want to promise open source software simply to attract the mindshare and users who habitually ignore anything that isn't open source, trying to capture financial value may well be infeasible unless some rare confluence of stars lines up for you. the key is in the word "capture" - capturing the value implies making sure it goes to you rather than to someone else, and that means imposing restrictions that will simply piss those same users off.