Ask HN: How would you sell open source software? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How would you sell open source software?

11 pointswjh_7 comments

This is a hypothetical question, I don't actually have anything I wish to sell.

If you had a piece of software that you wished to be open source, but that you also wished to sell; how would you go about doing so?

Of course, if the source were to be hosted publically, then it would be easy for anyone to build it. But assume the software did not exclusively target developers, then it would still be possible to sell binaries and make money, I imagine. But what would be the best way to go about making money from your work, while still allowing others to browse the source, and make PRs if they wish?

Just wondering how easy it would be to keep things open, while still make money from your work.

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Really depends on the software what is a good fit. Some common options are:

a) for server software, you can sell a hosted version

b) for software for corporate use, you can sell support

c) for software users might want to change or integrate with their own code, have a strict open-source license like AGPL and sell differently licensed versions to customers that don't want to conform to the original license

d) sell closed plugins or companion tools (e.g. sell an iPhone app that integrates with your open-source web app)

You can sell value adds such as additional services or support. Nothing stops you from selling an open source project as is, either, you just have to be a aware that you are essentially competing with your own "free version".

There are also a couple of good Open Source consortiums that are run as non-profits. They act as a 501(c)3 parent organization that handles a lot of the legal footprint for the open source projects they manage and in return they provide a useful, charitable way for businesses and enterprises and individuals to donate to open source projects that they use and have it count as charitable giving that can be used to a tax credit advantage. You aren't going to get rich on "donation-ware", but it certainly is a good way to get smart people to help pay for the maintenance of long-term open source projects.

There are plenty of examples of this, look at some of the software that is open source but have sales around them.

nginx, redhat, surgarcrm etc. There really are a lot of examples. Once you find a few, look at the different license types they use, GPL has different versions that allow for different things, MIT is probably the most permissive and probably wouldn't be the choice given the description you gave. Then of course, you can always have a license written that fits your specific requirements.

As it's related I'll post some links.

I've recently discovered: http://fosslawyers.org/the-copyfair-iniciative/

And I have an idea how to organize open source project to be both free, and sustainable (make income to fund it's development):

https://github.com/CopyFairCorp/copyfair

I wrote up an article a while back on open-source business models for startups which you might find interesting:

http://blog.imranghory.org/open-source-business-models

(although it focuses on startups and not so much lifestyle businesses where other business models are also viable)

Hosted version with some extra features built in along with support.

Open sourced host-your-own but you pay for fast support and potentially setup.

Spend 5 minutes googling license types.

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