
Ask HN: List of open-source business models? - johnx123-up
Apart from donations, what are the other viable business models around open source software?
======
open-source-ux
The licensing and distribution model for open source make it impossible to
simply sell your open source product (i.e. you don't want to sell support,
charge for documentation, create a SaaS, or create tiers of closed source and
open source - you just want to sell your open source product direct to
customers).

An alternative option is 'source available' \- give your customers access to
your product source code and permission to modify the code to meet their needs
but without right to distribute the product. Lots of open source developers
dislike this model, but it's up to you to make up your own mind.

I wrote a bit a bit more on this topic in the following recent discussion on
HN about on how to make a living with open source. There lots of comments and
differences in opinions. Worth a read:

 _Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself:_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23218943](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23218943)

------
mtmail
Training or writing books about the software you wrote. For example Wes
McKinney is the creator of the Pandas library
([https://pandas.pydata.org/](https://pandas.pydata.org/)) and wrote the
"Python for Data Analysis" book.

While the [https://tailwindcss.com/](https://tailwindcss.com/) CSS library is
open source, the authors make money by selling access to a component library
[https://tailwindui.com/](https://tailwindui.com/)

~~~
johnx123-up
Thank you! Will it generate _enough_ income?

------
zzo38computer
I don't know all of them, but I can list a few. There are some possibilities:

\- Binaries: Some users will pay for precompiled software, so that they do not
have to compile it by themself. You might find this sometimes in some "app
stores".

\- Physical components: You might sell hardware, printed manuals, DVDs, etc.

\- Paid support: You can sell support to customers who want priority support
and/or professional support. SQLite also has paid support, and in the case of
SQLite, this paid support also includes testing.

\- Hosting: If you do not want to install and host it by yourself, the company
that makes that software may do it for you, if you pay them to do so.

\- Dual licensing: Some software has dual licensing, such as Ghostscript and
Swiss Ephemeris. SQLite also kind of does; you can pay for a license, even
though you won't really need it (since it is already public domain), but it is
there in case your company's legal department requires you to have a license.

\- Customization: If you do not want to make the changes by yourself, you may
be able to pay them to customize the software for your use profesionally.

\- Proprietary components: I do not really recommend this for must cases, but
it is sometimes a possibility.

\- Installation: Payment for the company that produces the software to install
it properly, where the customer requires it.

------
bruce511
People pay for Value. And usually what they buy is not software. [1]

So how you monetise depends on what you are making, and who the target
customer is. B2B software is more about services and support - B2C is more
about instant gratification and convenience.[2]

Making money just selling software is hard now because the market is
saturated. All word processors do the same task, but I use MS Word over
LibreOffice because of network effects.

So the answer to your question is to figure out where your value offering
really lies, and focus on that. The software license is not the critical
factor.

[1] Google does not sell software, it sells search results. Facebook sells
community and so on. Oracle /Red hat doesn't sell software, it sells backup,
services, reputation and so on.

[2] every so often there will be a thread here complaining about someone
selling open source. But compiling and shipping updated binaries adds a value
and saves me time, so I'm happy to pay for that. (and of course it's
completely within the bounds of most open source licenses)

------
Jugurtha
There's also the "open-core model"[^1]. From the Wikipedia description:

> _The open-core model is a business model for the monetization of
> commercially produced open-source software. Coined by Andrew Lampitt in
> 2008,[1] the open-core model primarily involves offering a "core" or
> feature-limited version of a software product as free and open-source
> software, while offering "commercial" versions or add-ons as proprietary
> software.[2][3]_

Here's GitLab's CEO[^2] talking about _" Offering an on-prem / self-managed
version of your software"_[^3]

Here's a timestamped video titled _" E05 Pioneering version control for data
science with Pachyderm co-founder and CEO Joe Doliner"_[^4], where Pachyderm's
CEO[^5] addresses the business model.

Here's a timestamped video, titled _" How to Find Product Market Fit"_, of
Peter Reinhardt[^6], where he answers the question of "why would someone pay
anything for an open source library that's 580 lines of code.."[^7]. There's a
blog post detailing this, too[^8].

There are several degrees of what is open-source and what is not, and
different ways to build a business around that.

[^1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-
core_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-core_model)

[^2]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sytse](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sytse)

[^3]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo0bejtOnQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo0bejtOnQc)

[^4]:
[https://youtu.be/YG8VFOZBb2A?t=1288](https://youtu.be/YG8VFOZBb2A?t=1288)

[^5]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jdoliner](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jdoliner)

[^6]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pkrein](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pkrein)

[^7]:
[https://youtu.be/_6pl5GG8RQ4?t=1871](https://youtu.be/_6pl5GG8RQ4?t=1871)

[^8]: [https://segment.com/blog/show-hn-to-
series-d/](https://segment.com/blog/show-hn-to-series-d/)

------
zelly
Hosting: Wordpress, Github

Support: RedHat

Dual License: Qt/Nokia, BerkeleyDB/Oracle, MongoDB

Trojans/Spyware: Android, Chromium

~~~
factorialboy
GitHub is not open source.

~~~
zelly
It is a hosted server for a piece of free software (git) although obviously
with a huge amount of proprietary software bolted on top.

------
johnx123-up
Can someone please explain 'Magento' business model?

------
ainasurfs
Premium add ons like themes and plugins for Wordpress

