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Comment by mrskitch | Hacker News Reader

My own opinion: I think there is as a marketplace. Years ago when I started browserless.io, I wanted to find a way to sell access to the core image of ours. Docker kinda has/had a marketplace, where you can buy access to curated and secure images, but it didn’t get any support or news on it. Because of this we went the open-code route and just sold licenses. Too bad because I’d much rather have had a marketplace to do this instead.

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Open code or core?

OpenFaaS has been a struggle even since it was started, even with a large community and many commercial end-users, none pay for support, services or sponsor.

Most of the time saying that Open Source isn't sustainable results in some smarty dropping Elastic or some other massive VC-backed company in like GitLab. It's not helpful.

I suppose it's open core. Open Source is hard because you have to separate people from their money even though the code is "free." I'm not saying it's _the_ answer, but browserless.io isn't VC backed, and it certainly makes more money than most of the Patreon/sponsor models. I understand that it's not just a library, but a full-blown service, which makes it easier to market and sell.

Have you considered a hosted product? I have no idea what your audience is like, but that seems to be where we've had a lot of success. Happy to chat anytime as well: joel at browserless dot io.

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