Monetizing Your Open Source Project

blog.ueber.io

4 points·hanspagel··5 comments

Let’s face it. Nobody profits from abandoned open source projects. I’ve compiled a list of a few ideas to monetize your open source project.

Anything I’m missing?

Nice list! See also: https://github.com/nayafia/lemonade-stand

What I find missing in most discussions around this topic is something in between donations and purchases: Very few projects [1] offer "goodwill licenses" to buy, which allows companies to support the product using their "usual means" (without getting any actual benefit from it, so in some ways it is a donation): In most places I know, arguing up the chain why the guy from the IT department wants to DONATE money is near to impossible, whereas simply purchasing 100 or 500 or more "licenses" of something deployed on all machines does not raise any eyebrows.

[1] Is there a list of such projects somewhere? How well does it work? I came across such projects but I don't remember specific examples.

Oh, thanks for sharing! Added both to the post.

Metafizzy/Isotope is probably an example of goodwill licenses, where you’re able to use everything without any limitation but are kindly asked to pay. That’s what you mean, right?

Not so sure that's a good example? From https://isotope.metafizzy.co/#commercial-license , it looks like they are offering paid commercial licenses.

You’re right. I’ll look for a better example.

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