
Ask HN: Open-source projects that we never heard of them that become profitable? - umen
Hey HN,<p>Do you know OSS project which are not famous like we already know well (redis,sidekiq ..)<p>which created by small team or 1 developer and become their main or side profitable income?<p>Thanks
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patio11
Yes. One (one!) gets there primarily via donations. All the rest are operated
as small software companies which happen to have a OSS product available.

To the next obvious question "Who are you talking about?", I'm going to demur,
because most people making money in OSS, like most making money selling SaaS
(or anything else, for that matter), don't really see much value in getting
that fact blabbed on the Internets. Information travels at the speed of (your
liquid refreshment of choice).

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rajacombinator
Could you expand more on this point? With your background in the space, would
be interesting to hear your insights on what proportion of SaaS businesses
fall into the secretive vs. “any press or leads are good” categories. And when
to go with one strategy or the other.

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pkrotich
I developed osTicket and we now have a growing profitable business- we have a
SaaS offering and provide commercial support to enterprise users.

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realty_geek
Wow, that's awesome!! I looked up your story and that is awesome too. I would
love my open source real estate website builder project
([https://github.com/etewiah/property_web_builder](https://github.com/etewiah/property_web_builder))
to achieve something similar. Hope you don't mind, I've reached out to you via
linked in.

~~~
pkrotich
Thanks - I’ll reach back.

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croh
FreeSWITCH. You can check any opensource telecom tech. Most contributors turn
themselves as consultants.

