Finding unmaintained popular OSS projects as a creative way to start business? | Hacker News Reader

Finding unmaintained popular OSS projects as a creative way to start business?

8 pointstalboren11 comments

i find it happening more and more, companies that started this way: they either found a pretty-popular repo that is no longer maintained or they "inherited" a no-longer maintained popular repo and grew a business out of it.

wdyt?

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I think it's a great idea. Do it at scale and you will probably learn a lot.

I think there's good odds you eventually stumble upon gold: 1) a popular open source project with a relatively simple path to monetization 2) that you are highly interested in.

This one would be a fun one to brainstorm about. Feel free to email me if you want to chat sometime.

I think it would be nice to do this, but maybe by offering a drop-in replacement for an old/proprietary dependency.

Something like a new compiler for some ancient language still in niche use? Or a "DBMS" server that speaks the same wire protocol as Sybase or Oracle... but uses cloud storage for the data?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KspNLO9i9g

A bit like this floppy disk retailer... I wonder what the software equivalents are, where there are businesses with some massive custom applications that depend and still run on platforms that are not being improved? Offering a drop-in replacement that solves some of the platform problems, but does not require reworking the application itself should have an existing market to tap into.

Somewhat related, I know of people who buy smaller companies on MicroAcquire or elsewhere, typically for some small 4 or 5 figure USD sum, then they simply monetize it with ad spend and paywalling certain features. They generate 10x revenue then they sell it again for another 5-10x multiple, rinse and repeat.

For example, Rob Walling, cofounder of Drip, MicroConf and now TinySeed, did this:

https://robwalling.com/2015/12/02/what-i-learned-buying-grow...

https://vimeo.com/70901901

Now instead of buying the company, you can simply do the same for free via repackaging the open source project.

Probably got abandoned because nobody wanted to pay to maintain it. But maybe in one case in 1000 it can work.

i'd say that's a high chance, and maybe finding a way to "maximize" on that chance is a good strategy

Making a good business out of that is a matter of optimizing the sales pipeline and the development process, it's interesting.

I abandoned my Pretty Diff application 3.5 years ago. It was once downloaded more than 100,000 times per month from NPM. Nearly 10,000 people per month still access it in the browser. So, you can use that.

Go look at gorilla-mux. Seriously a major project that needs a new owner. https://github.com/gorilla#gorilla-toolkit

This is great example , many are using this framework but no one owning it . how come ?

Perhaps worth someone looking into why companies that use these projects never contribute back. Is it because they prevent their developers from doing so, or because they just aren't aware of what their systems use, why, and how much they are built on it. Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2347/

Good post , the key here to find abandon project that companies still use . i saw it in wordpress plugins and java maven plugins

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