

Ask HN: How are you funding your open-source work? - bestan

Is anyone here working on open-source full-time? How are you funding your work and what do you think a solution should be? We&#x27;re trying to solve this problem and we would like to hear your thoughts.
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mindcrime
Well, I'm working on a startup that's based on Open Source software, but right
now everything is funded out of my pocket, essentially. We plan to sell
subscriptions to the official, certified, released version(s), ala Red Hat, as
well as offering a SaaS based on our offerings, but we don't have paying
customers just yet.

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bestan
Any particular services that you will be using for setting up subscription and
distributing versions or are you rolling your own?

~~~
mindcrime
There's at least one open source project[1] out there, something I think Red
Hat may actually be involved with (or behind) for managing subscriptions and
what-not. We haven't deployed it yet, as we aren't yet at the point of having
paying customers. And if we signed a deal tomorrow we'd just keep track of
things manually in the interim.

As for distribution... we're working on our own homegrown "customer portal"
which will deal with downloads and what-not, as well as other "customer
stuff".

[1]: [http://www.candlepinproject.org/](http://www.candlepinproject.org/)

