Ask HN: Sell framework licenses or open source it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Sell framework licenses or open source it?

6 pointsra00l11 comments

Hey fellow HN'ers. I've worked a couple of months on an a/b testing framework for .net (asp.net + desktop apps).

Now that I'm close to finishing it, I don't know what to do: open source it on github or sell licenses of it.

What would you do?

Open source it under GPL and sell exceptions as the copyright owner

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions

The benefit being that everything GPL touches also needs to be open sourced, unless you hold the magic multi-licence wand :)

You've been around HN for 600 days as I write this so I'm surprised you've asked this question here. You should know that "open source it" was going to always be the popular answer on HN in 2013.

The 2009-2010 HN crowd was mostly startup founders, investors, and employees 1 and 2 and it was also mostly people in the US. The 2013-2014 crowd is mostly not startup founders, investors, and employees 1 and 2m and it's probably 50% US folks. As many other recent HN folks have said, "HN is just another subreddit now." That results in a very different hive mind today than in years' past.

If it was me, I'd be wary of making "business decisions" based on the answer to a popularity contest on a site mostly frequented by people who (a) don't live in my country, (b) didn't grow up in the countries I want to do business in, and (c) do not and have not ever actually owned or run a business.

The problem, of course, is figuring out whose advice to take and whose to ignore. Always tricky...

scott, thank you for a great advice. I won't make a decision based on suggestions posted here, but I will consider the pros and cons nevertheless

Perhaps combine. Make it open source for personal / non-commercial use. License it for companies who will use it commercially. I don't know the details of the product (complexity for example) but might be worth it test if people are interested in workshops / training. Not sure if you're interested in offering that of course.

Edit: Also, think of what is more important now. Getting people to use the framework or make the perfect decision on how to make money with it.

I like the idea of mixed license. However, do you think anyone uses a/b testing for personal/non-commercial purposes?

Perhaps you're right, it's an edge case. But for other open source projects it can be interesting to use or at least try.

What I'm not sure about is, how do people try the library. Buying a library without testing it might be a big step. In my experience developers like to try something in their apps and then pay for it when they have commercial use for it.

You're right about a trial version... Can be quite tricky.

Like others said, open source it, get a community and profit. But they left out one hugely important step... trademarks. Get your trademark, make sure it is a defensible name and register in every market you think you might ever operate in.

As far as which license, GPL/AGPL are good options, but you may get more mileage out of an MPL or Artistic License 2.0 license.

If you want to make a business out of it, you can sell license but if you worked on it only as a hobby project, you can open source it, totally depends upon how you personally want to go ahead with it.

I doubt it can be a business, but it could be a nice side income.

Open source it, get user base and code contributions. Then, if it takes off, offer an 'enterprise' version with perceived benefits.

The 'enterprise' version can be a complete re-write with a couple of features that don't get included in your 2.0 open source edition.

Assuming you get users for the original open source version and that the extra features are worth having, you can sell the product on to them. Whether they buy it or not comes down to price.

Testing is also something you can sell. There are advantages in having a separate test team, be that test team. Provide a good service and build a customer base.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com