
Ask HN: In 2016, how would a open source software make money in Bay Area? - soroso
The question is not new, but the world changes and the system of opportunities change as well... Is it possible to do an open source product and still make money out of it?
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kjksf
Yes, but...

Making money from software is hard. When you're talking about creating a new
product or service, the odds are against you i.e. it's more likely that you'll
fail than succeed.

Making money from open-source software is 5-10x harder because open-source
removes exclusivity, which is the most important thing that pushes people over
their dislike of paying. If they can get your thing for free, they won't pay.

That being said, sometimes well executed hybrid "open-source + something
exclusive" strategy is the only way for a given product.

For example, MySQL would have no chance against Oracle, DB2 or SQL Server if
it tried to compete as another expensive, closed source database. They pretty
much had to give away their stuff for free to gain massive market share and
sell "something exclusive" (expensive support contracts) to a small subset of
their users.

One successful hybrid strategy is open source + hosting. WordPress, Ghost,
Discourse, Vanilla Forums - those are all projects that are open source, you
can host them yourself for free but most people don't have skills or desire to
self-host, so, like MySQL, they use being open source as free marketing to
gain market share and sell convenience to a small subset of their users.

You didn't specify if you're talking about single person business or a bigger
team.

Hybrid strategies are usually too difficult to execute for a single person,
there's just too much work writing the software and managing hosting,
providing support etc.

At the end of the day you should decide what's more important: money or
writing open source code.

If money, then don't take additional risk of open source.

If open source, then don't expect money.

If both then accept that you will most likely end up with neither.

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pavlov
The closing of RethinkDB shows that it's not easy, at least.

