monetizing open source software - KeynesYouDigIt/Knowledge GitHub Wiki

You must Monetize to incentivize and maintain the code! if you can't make money off it, only independently wealthy people can be significant contributors OR you can raise donations

How to Build an Open Source Business

Open source is blowing up! Elastic, github, Red Hat, Core OS, Databricks, Mongo, etc.

Devs have to like it (project community fit) - ~github stats (starts and such) THEN users have to like it (product market fit) - ~monthly users THEN paying users have to like it (value market fit) - revenue

Different models

Pay for Support

like Red Hat

+

• ((easy to understand))

-

• hard to scale

Open Core

Like elastic, confluent

+

• ((flexible))

-

• really rough to balance whats free and whats not

SaaS

Like Databricks, ODK

+

• high value, easy to understand
• You can leverage licensing as a go to market strategy
• in history, cloud providers struggle to actually put projects out of business, partnership is usually better

-

• not super defensible usually, cloud providers try to do the same thing (see above tho)

Tips

• Remember - YOU WROTE THE CODE. thats your comp adv.
• you dont HAVE to use MIT/Apache, take your time but dont stress about which lic you use.
• Figure out the go to market and the customer!
• you'll need community mgmt/developer evangelism