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Ask HN: How to stay open source and also make money?

by anbardoi on 5/1/24, 11:23 AM with 21 comments

I'm not asking for the tried-and-true slimy methods of baiting and switching, rug-pulling, paid/premium tiers, selling user data. I am oh-so accustomed to that, and it's obviously not very good OSS. Nor the non-slimy ways of requesting donations/support.

Could anyone who wants to comment help me brainstorm some ideas to monetize a completely unrestricted/open-source project? I'm thinking like making everything free to get and use, but providing incentive to WANT to give the project money. Things like transparency and good rapport with users is a must, I think. Perhaps a Sponsorware-like approach where new features are only available to sponsors for a period of time, and then freely released to the public? Anyone else have some ideas?

  • by AdityaRohit on 5/1/24, 8:55 PM

    There can be many ways to monetize your product, you need to start from the top - the problem you are solving and who does it help. I am assuming this is a developer tool as you are working with OSS model. Once you do that identify your user and go up the chain till the point you reach decision maker(writing is helpful--draw a map maybe?) . Find their pain points, solve for them and monetize your product. Happy to chat and brainstorm. My 2 cents from building a devtool.

  • by sandwichukulele on 5/1/24, 7:36 PM

    To help you brainstorm, it would help before looking for ways to monetize, to establish a ballpark figure of how much money is to be made. Should this be enough to cover small leisures like a coffee or are you looking to live off this revenue entirely? How much money are you looking to make OP? how many X US dollars a month?

  • by noashavit on 5/2/24, 1:08 AM

    Are you currently accepting donations? If not, get that set up so your users can donate, by tier, if they are gaining value from your project.

    If you want them to want to pay for the experience you need to provide an out of this world experience whenever they engage with your project.

  • by shrimp_emoji on 5/1/24, 9:19 PM

    You don't.

    Pick one and only one. It's like asking "how do I make money with acts of kindness".

  • by danenania on 5/3/24, 3:35 AM

    To be honest, I think you have a bit of a self-defeating attitude. Building an open source project and then building paid tiers on top is not "slimy". It's one of the best and most sustainable ways to keep a project going. The alternatives are that it gets supported by a large company, in which case it becomes subservient to that company's needs, or it eventually gets abandoned because people need to eat.

    I really don't understand the mindset that it's slimy. I get the "rug-pull" thing, but just because you made a project with features a, b, and c that are free, why does that make it slimy to add paid features d, e, and f on top? People are still getting a, b, and c for free, so what's the problem? There's no rug-pull there.

    Would it be better if a, b, and c never existed? It just seems like such a clear win-win to me.

  • by brudgers on 5/1/24, 5:45 PM

    providing incentive to WANT to give the project money

    If you want money, ask for it at least.

    Requiring it is better because it makes your work sustainable.

    Require enough of it that you are not trying to figure out how to avoid work.

    You are not obligated to save other people money.

    And if you feel like giving back, take some of the money you get and use it for food for people who don't have enough to eat.

    Good luck.

  • by LorenDB on 5/1/24, 11:30 AM

    Traditionally, the best ways to make clean (a.k.a. not slimy) money in open source have been (a) offer a hosted tier for people who don't want to selfhost (which only works for a server-style application) and (b) offer a paid support tier which guarantees a certain level of support; noncustomers take lower priority.

    One method that I really like is paywalling software store versions of applications. You can still manually install from a GitHub page or something similar for free, but if you want to have auto updates and such via your software store, you can pay a small fee for that privilege. TaskbarX has used this method in the past, although I don't know if they still are using it.