How can an Open Source project survive?

wbb2012-12-28 09:34:29

Monetization

wbb, 2012-12-28 09:34:29

Recently I asked you about my WysiBB editor . I came to the conclusion that there was no need to stop working on it, I was already inclined to this, but when I saw that this product would still be useful to people, I became even more established in this thought.

But the next question arises. And due to what in general can such a project live? I mean its funding. Indeed, in order for this product to actively develop on it, it is necessary to work constantly and hard (the web is actively developing, so you need to keep up with the times and introduce new technologies). And for this you need to leave a permanent place of work and deal with it.

Colleagues, tell me, what can WуsiBB live on? How can he support a development team? Maybe you have thoughts on this.

PS: Fundraising in the form of "Support the project" in our region is very ineffective.

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11 answer(s)

wbb, 2012-12-28
@wbb

So far, if we bring everything to a common denominator, I come to the conclusion that Open Source can only make a profit on very large and promoted projects. And a project like WysiBB can only make a profit if it is paid and targeted at a Western audience. It seems that many other Russian projects have come to the same conclusion.

Vyacheslav Plisko, 2012-12-28
@AmdY

I worked on an open source project with a lot of income. I did not have access to financial details, so I will describe my guesses.
1. There are paid licenses for more functionality. In your case, except to make an additionally more functional bootloader, like analogues from the world of wysiwyg.
2. The second option brings really huge profits - this is customization of the product for the customer or his project. You know the code better than any developer, so you can do it faster, better, and therefore much more expensive.

Sergei Borisov, 2012-12-29
@risik

For example, in this presentation , Konstantin Kaplinsky, (TightVNC, quite a successful OpenSource project) talks about what opensource can live on. I'm not sure if his money-making model is right for you. But there are some good ideas there.

Antelle, 2012-12-28
@Antelle

For example, here is highcharts . It is free for regular users. Companies must buy a license for it for commercial use. If anyone wants, he buys another caliper for a separate money.

wbb, 2012-12-28
@wbb

At the moment I see only the possibility of selling extra. opportunities. Just pay for commercial use, we even have very few such companies (if any). But here another question arises. It needs significant additional. opportunities to want to pay for it, and WysiBB essentially already has what it takes.
I wonder if such a product as RedactorJS (Imperavi) is popular? Is it really actively bought?

Dmitry Kuzmin, 2012-12-28
@Dimkaa

Find investors - how can a startup try to launch? From my own experience, I can say that Open Source can earn on additional paid services-project features, for example, commercial use of the product is paid, etc. By the way, just look at the discussion for your soul.

Konstantin Kitmanov, 2012-12-28
@k12th

And why, in fact, fundraising should take place only in one region, and not throughout the Internet?

oENDark, 2012-12-28
@oENDark

Finish the editor to the ideal, make it as simple as possible and sell it to different website development companies. I will say from experience that a huge problem with such firms is filling. Woe editors like TinyMce or CKeditor have a ton of shortcomings, and if there was a quality analogue that would not litter the code with unnecessary tags, it was just even a monkey, then many companies would buy it.

kastigar, 2012-12-28
@kastigar

The formula is simple: if the project is needed by people, then the money will appear, otherwise there is no need to waste time. If you need a very small group of people, then let them live in this circle, but there will be no talk of any finances.
A word of advice: don't worry too much about money. The most important thing is to do with the soul, for people who need it. And then you will have donations, sponsorships, corporate clients, etc. Look at the popular OSS products, they clearly have a soul, don't they?

vsespb, 2012-12-28
@vsespb

Is there JavaScript in the code?
Then dual licensing. GPL + commercial license.
Javascript library under GPL cannot be used without laying out the source code of the entire site under GPL.
example www.plupload.com/ (I myself once saw how this thing was bought after seeing the license).
ps
It seems that you can add a second license to the GPL if you wrote the code alone and there were no contributors, otherwise with the consent of all contributors.

Keyten, 2012-12-30
@Keyten

There are many options. Donations, paid for commercial use, paid for companies, paid for those who wish (the same as donations in practice: those who wish can buy the program to support the developer, the rest download it for that; Sublime Text 2 works according to this scheme), "paid bug fixes" ( like in Ubuntu).