

Ask HN: What are your motivations to open source a major project? - sr_banksy

Intrigued by individuals&#x27; decision trees on deciding whether to commercialize something or open source it. 
An example would be Firebase vs Hoodie or Firehose.
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mindcrime
_whether to commercialize something or open source it._

Those are not mutually exclusive positions. Software can be open source (or
even free software) and still be commercialized.

In our case, we made all of our products open source for a number of reasons,
some ideological and some pragmatic. Whether or not that proves to be a good
decision from a financial standpoint remains TBD... but the important thing
is, it doesn't matter. If we never make a dime from what we're doing, we'll
all have benefited from the process in other ways. And we'll have contributed
something to the world that somebody may gain some benefit from one day.

~~~
sr_banksy
True, I misspoke. I meant commercialize it as closed source / proprietary
software. But cheers on your work!

Beyond your team, does the community contribute to your product in meaningful
ways?

~~~
DonaldFisk
There's also the option of a shared source licence. This means providing the
source code, but only allowing free non-commercial use. Commercial use would
then come under a different licence and would have to be paid for.

Third party contributors whose work is included in commercial sales would then
be given a portion of the revenue from those sales.

~~~
sytse
Only allowing non-commercial use is a serious inhibitor of the popularity of
the project. More common is to have a AGPL/GPLv3 license that some companies
will pay to get rid of. Alternatively use a business friendly license (MIT
Expat) and have open core business model where some features are proprietary
(like we at GitLab use).

~~~
DonaldFisk
A shared source licence still allows commercial use of the software - it just
has to be paid for. If it is given away, with or without strings attached,
there is no direct way for the developers to be remunerated for their effort.
Open source might encourage a few companies to contribute to projects, but
that only pays the developers of that software who are employed by those
companies.

Private individuals, or non-profit institutions, can still use shared source
software. A few might be put off if they think it won't help them to find a
job, but even they will think twice if companies start paying to use it.

Having popular software is nice, but it doesn't pay the bills if you can't
charge for it.

