Ask HN: Favorite strategy to monetize open source?
Curious about successful experiences. Sell support, sell as a package, sell as a SaaS, sell hardware (where it applies). Sponsorships. Ads (?)...
It's hard to make a lot of cash in open source. It can be done, but 'success' is likely not going to be what happens in the end.
Do you still have anything online? I looked at http://fundamental-code.com and didn't see anything, but maybe I missed something.
I'd be interested to see if there are ways to simplify the open source -> saas process.
I built a quick & dirty landing page, I'm curious if something like this resonates. Any feedback? https://saasform.dev/transform-open-source-in-saas
The landing page to me looks bland to the point of being suspicious. The github page certainly seems to do a better job of selling the idea, but you need to have some example projects using your tooling to get most people over the hump of "This is likely going to be a massive pain to setup and maintain without a good chance of reasonable payback". Monetizing open source is hard and additional code doesn't really fix it. It's a problem of user support, marketing, changing project priorities, site reworking, etc, etc. One of the reasons why things like github, patreon, etc work is they help obtain an audience which is an example of the non-code factors at work.
I see also your point on web vs other kind of open source, I for example run a hardware open source project and that's a completely different story.
Curious if anyone with a more web-related OS project has feedback/wants to chime in.