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Comment by esistgut | Hacker News Reader

Do you have any plan to open source the platform?

Honestly, we would absolutely love to open-source it! The issue is that we're a bootstrapped start-up, and it's rather difficult to make open source pay the bills, even if it becomes huge (see, eg, Docker's troubles). By charging for the product, we can claim some of the value we create, and be sustainable so the platform stays around.

Perhaps you could open source a lite version while keeping the premium version paid for?

Are you worried about would-be customers self hosting? Because I doubt there’s that much overlap between would-be monthly customers and those who are eager to self host.

Or are you worried about clones?

For a counter-example, see RedHat :) I can certainly understand your position, but it isn't impossible to make money from Open Source. One approach to get some funding might be a KickStarter or Patreon type offering. (Or a combination of both). You also have your hosting service. Just some ideas, there are lots of open source business models- good luck whatever you decide.

RedHat was bought and incorporated by a pre-existing business. It wasn't bootstrapped.

I'd also discourage a patreon- or kickstarter-style offering for a B2B product, because it signals very clearly that you're not playing with the big fish.

Not a bootstrapped business, you mean, like Docker (Explicitly used as an example, to which I was providing a counter-example)?

As for signaling, one would not have to use those providers if they felt it did not fit their brand, and could roll their own platform. But if signaling that you want to "play with the big fish" is what one wants, most companies hire sales team who go out and play golf with prospects. Having an open source product and using other forms of funding certainly does not preclude doing that. (Though being a small bootstrapped business might make it more difficult).

Perhaps a clear migration path from Anvil-infused Python to vanilla Python / JavaScript would be a reasonable approach. If for one reason or another I have to move my apps elsewhere I'd would like an easy way to do so rather than being permanently locked into a specific vendor.

At my entreprise, they are paying per seat to use gnat compiler. Even if it is open source and free to use for non commercial use, you can sell it and expect that your potential clients will generally not cheat.

I can't see my company (a small business with a number of small apps, with engineering and marketing people who it'd be great if they could just use something like this to build some things themselves) ever using something like this that is both closed source and somewhat prone to lock in by the nature of how it works.

While charging for use might seem like a good business model, I think an awful lot of potential customers will just never use it because of it. You may be able to find a model where you charge for the front-end page designer or something, but open source everything needed to run the site so that being locked in to a product you have to pay for and can't modify is less of a concern.

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