
Ask HN: Should I kill my open source project for a 5 figure sum? - etewiah
The short version: late last year I open sourced the code I use for creating real estate websites and now a company is offering me $10,000 to effectively kill it.  How do I calculate if its a good offer or not?
The longer version: These guys got in touch with me a month ago saying that they wanted to work with me on the project but strongly suggested that I make it closed source. I make it quite clear that I wanted to keep it open.  
We&#x27;ve exchanged a few friendly emails since then and last week they sent me an email offering to pay me $10,000 to close down the project on github and pass ownership of the code to them.
I think they made this offer primarily because they realised I was working on MLS &#x2F; RETS integration and I was going to make that part open source as well. One of the conditions they have made is that I do not compete against them in the MLS &#x2F; RETS integration space.
Its all a bit baffling to me and I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m going to accept it but just thought I might as well share here to hear what people think.
I haven&#x27;t really got a good way of calculating the value of my project but my gut instinct tells me that in the longer term (3 years +) I will be able to figure out a way to make some money out of it.
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smt88
That number is much too low. Ask them for $50k and see what they say.

Also, can you send me the name of your project? I'm really curious about it,
as I recently got an offer to do some work integrating MLS with another
system.

~~~
etewiah
Of course I tried asking for more - I'm not completely dumb ;)

The project is called PropertyWebBuilder

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idid
I'm afraid I can't provide a realistic answer to your question, only my
encouragement to keep things open.

Nevertheless, I am tangentially curious: once a project already is open
source, can it be realistically (legally) closed up again?

Envision the following scenario: I'm just going to clone your project now, as
it is - open source - on my machine. You might close it later, transfer
ownership, etc. Am I not holding a legally valid open source pile of code,
regardless of what Company X decided to do later?

~~~
etewiah
No, they can't stop anyone else from carrying on with the project. It hasn't
had much take-up so far though. A few people have starred it and forked it but
hardly anyone has contributed to it. I think what they are most concerned
about is the MLS integration piece I'm working on at the moment which is not
yet complete.

~~~
idid
I understand now. Thanks for clarifying :)

As a little side note - possibly helpful if you are willing to invest more
time in this project in the long term: I've had some discussions long time ago
with people from wikihouse [1], and am still struggling with similar issues
with my own adventures (academic research sponsored by an industry network).
The model wikihouse adopted was that everyone has a seat at the table, but
nobody owns the table itself (or the chairs).

It can be simplistically simmered down to: If this is a core feature that will
allow your project to expand and make it relevant to a wider audience,
considering labelling this as a "core feature" and insist on it being part of
the open source project. They could sponsor it and/or have direct support of
the developer and/or "first adopter" privileges but the code will fold back in
the public branch after a given time. It would help if you had another company
expressing interest (maybe just ask).

Good luck with your endeavours!

[1] [https://wikihouse.cc/](https://wikihouse.cc/)

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etewiah
Wow, wikihouse is pretty awesome!

Yeah, the idea of core features being open source makes sense. What I'm aiming
for is that PropertyWebBuilder becomes something like WordPress for the real
estate sector - a base on which value-added functionality can be built. That
extra functionality can be commercial but I want to core product to remain
free.

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startupdiscuss
Okay, I will assume:

1\. You are unlikely to make more than $10k

2\. If you do make some money off it, it will be much more than $10k

That is to say, there is a 90% chance of making $0 and a 10% chance of making
100s of thousands.

In this case, it is worth more than $10k from an expected value perspective.

The value of the product might be much greater for the community, and you
might get speaking gigs and so on out of it. Not sure how much you value
those.

If you don't need the money, I would not take it.

If you do need the money, who am I to tell you what to do?

~~~
etewiah
"a 10% chance of making 100s of thousands" \- I wish / hope ;)

I don't desperately need the money right now. I'm more attracted by the idea
of a good base from which I can draw a steady income over the years. I've been
quite surprised at how much effort is involved in maintaining an open source
project though.

Its fun but its also quite tempting when an offer comes along. Would be
interesting to know if there have been other projects that have shut down
after an offer was made.

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Rockvole
These guys have given you excellent market information. The piece of your
project with value is the mls integration you are about to write. I think you
should continue working on the open source part and keep the mls plugin closed
source and sell the plugin for the mls integration to the realtors. imo this
plugin will be worth more than $10k and the guys contacting you know that.

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wolco
If you are thinking in terms of money you probably won't make more than the
offer so I would take it. Previous versions were released already under an
open license. Take the money and take down the code and give us all time to
fork it.

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etewiah
Of course, I should have posted the link to the project:

[https://github.com/etewiah/property_web_builder](https://github.com/etewiah/property_web_builder)

~~~
jimsmart
Thanks - I've forked it.

The 10k is now pretty much a moot point: if your original repo vanishes, there
will still be forks of the project on Github.

Makes me wonder if they actually know how open source works?

~~~
jimsmart
What you could do now you have an obviously successful open source project, is
to offer your services as an open source developer for hire, and see if
they'll pay you to add new features to your software.

Though it kinda sounds like they're not going to be into that suggestion
without quite some re-education.

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informatimago
$10,000 is barely worth one man.month. If you spend more than that, then you
should get more than that.

But then, independently on the time invested, your project may be worth
millions of revenue a year. At the current rate of interest, (close to 0), you
shouldn't sell it at less than a few billions!

Oh, and all of this is totally unrelated to the opensource aspect!

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philippeback
10K is not much.

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iampoul
10k is really nothing if its a threat.

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etewiah
There is the possibility that I won't make 10k with the project ;)

