Ask HN: Monetization strategy for my open source projects? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Monetization strategy for my open source projects?

4 pointsnodemaker7 comments

Hi Hacker News,

I have two really cool projects that I want to open source.

First one is called Baraka and its a Python framework for generating Objective C code.You can generate Objective C classes by writing their templates in Python. Its very useful as some vanilla code needs to be written in every app and using Baraka you can auto-generate most of your vanilla code.

Second one is a re-implementation of Facebook for iPhone and I would like to open source it and call it OpenBook.It basically uses the facebook graph api and has most of the functionality the facebook for iPhone has.

Now I want to do this for the following reasons.

1) They have been rotting in my private repos for quite some time now and I would rather have them benefitting some other hacker than rot there.I also want to give back to OS.

2) I would like to promote my free hacker news app for iphones and ipads. (Check it out at itunes.apple.com/us/app/hackernode/id473882597)

3) If possible I would like to make some money :)

Now can you please share your thoughts on how I can accomplish goal 3 and also what license I should use and why?

OpenBook will most likely be free but how do I protect myself against sleazy copycats who will publish a dozen paid clones of OpenBook on the app store the next day?

Commenting mostly because you asked me to on Twitter:

1) The market value of a social network with 0 users is 0. This would be true if you were at 100% feature-parity with Facebook. You're not.

2) There are a couple of ways to make money with OSS. I strongly suggest moving away from the consumer Internet onto the producer Internet with your OSS endeavors if you want to make money. This gives you a lot of attractive options, such as a) solving the problems of companies which otherwise would have to pay $20k per month per engineer to solve those problems and then b) selling them consulting services priced with regards to the value you will create for their businesses.

For example, I have OSS A/B testing software. That fact plus a history of publishing regarding A/B testing and achieving results with it makes me pretty darn useful to other software companies. I do occasional consulting on how to implement A/B testing at software companies, generally less on the code side and more on the "What should we test? How should we test it? Can you get us started?" side and price that service appropriately, with a salespitch sounding something like "So what would a 5% lift in your conversions at this point in the funnel do for your business? Cool. I think my project rate will be only a fraction of that, and my clients get 5% lifts all the time."

3) Code isn't valuable per se. Solving problems is valuable. To solve problems with code, you will often have to market that code directly to people who have the problems your code will solve. Engineers often think that the act of uploading code to Github will make magical things happen for them. They are sorely mistaken.

Thank you very much for responding.

I would like to clarify that OpenBook is not a new social network.It just shows a person's facebook feed and pics like the official app.Call it a facebook for iphone clone if you will.

Ah, my mistake. OK, back to the question: who does this code solve a problem for? Facebook already has an app to do this and it is highly likely that theirs is superior to yours. Additionally, folks don't pay THEM for it, either.

Its true that it doesnt really solve anything.I just made it last year to see if I can. (Actually I built HackerNode from the same code which does solve a problem for folks trying to read HN on iOS devices)

But now I am thinking if I open source it then other people can contribute and perhaps make it better than the official app.

Think firefox for facebook iphone apps.

So if it isn't solving a problem, why would it be useful to anyone?

Actually it is solving some problems.It enables you to read your facebook feed and friends feeds ,profiles and their photos etc etc.

Its just that facebook for iphone is also solving those problems and some extra ones too.

With the support of the open source community it could solve so many other novel problems and even solve the existing ones better.

make your HN app better than other HN apps and charge for it - add some features like "Don't show posts about x" and "Hide stories after reading". Offline capabilities

If you already have these features, promote them.

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