How can "The best TypeScript and JavaScript background job processing on the planet" only have 8 stars on GH ? :o
And I'm very, very confident.
That being said, I think you're inviting a lot of ill will by calling your project "the best", "in the world", etc. It's fine for a proprietary product but it feels awkward for open source projects (if that's your goal).
I think you should spend more time detailing how TaskBotJS is better than the competition in a formal document to justify your pricing. Again, the open source vs. product thing is confusing right now, which is fine for the initial release. If following an open source business model is your primary goal, I would spend more time on open source and community building and then the paying customers will follow. As of now, there isn't a lot of incentive to pay.
Finally, this work is dual licensed, how are you dealing with external contributions?
> That being said, I think you're inviting a lot of ill will by calling your project "the best", "in the world", etc.
I understand that viewpoint, and I'm definitely sympathetic to it. But I've spent a lot of time digging into this (as mentioned elsewhere--don't build when you can buy) and from my perspective I feel it's true. I'll change it when facts on the ground change. =)
You are correct in that right now the incentives to purchase are lopsidedly presented. Working on that this weekend, as it happens. Thing is, though, TaskBotJS is super useful, right now, as its open source release, and because it's super useful (I'm using it now on a project to make sure I keep tabs on how the developer experience of the OSS release feels) I wanted to get it out there for people to play with.
Which is why I am comfortable dealing with the lopsided nature of its marketing for a bit. The reason that I'm offering a pro version with feature gates is largely because 1) I want to use this for the long haul, 2) financial incentives need to align for me to be able to spend time on it, 3) I'm that convinced it's that good, and 4) selling pure support without a "you also get feature X, Y, and Z" is a conceptually more difficult road.
As a consultant I pretty regularly find myself going "you might want to consider Sidekiq Pro, because of support and also because batches will save your bacon", to which clients look at it, try it, and are comfortable paying for that (and also getting the support that, IMO, they need); I am doing likewise.
> Finally, this work is dual licensed, how are you dealing with external contributions?
I have a CLA and a rights grant I need to wire up to GitHub. Which totally does exclude some people from contributing, and I realize that. I built this with the expectation that I would be the overwhelmingly primary committer and I expect most open-source stuff to be plugins, etc.--people scratching their own itch, as I have with this.
[1]: apple.com
But in general I'd agree that stars can be a deceptive metric.
The project has not, I stress, changed in the interim. ;)
It's hard to define what's "the best in the world" so users are totally justified in looking at different metrics to figure out what that actually means, if there is no clear defined metrics to compare against.