
Ask HN: Should I open-source my bootstrapped product? - leroman
My product is a scraping orchestration platform (www.yielder.io)
About two months ago, after two years of work, I finally got to the point where the product is ready for prime time. 
Some feedback I got was that I might get more legitimacy &#x2F; traction &#x2F; business if I go open-source.
Finding customers is hard and for a technical guy the next steps are not obvious, so I started considering it.<p>Should I open source my product? if so under which license?
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dyeje
If your main goal is to gain customers, then I don't think open sourcing is
the right strategy. It will be a lot of work and I'm not convinced it will
actually net you any customers.

Your efforts would probably be better spent on more traditional marketing
tactics like advertising, attending related conferences, creating case
studies, etc.

Also, it looks like you are targeting Enterprise customers. Enterprise sales
cycles are long and arduous, you might want to chase smaller customers while
you work out the kinks. You might want to consider involving a partner with
Enterprise sales experience.

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brudgers
[random internet advice]

When actual paying customers are driving a move to open source, then it might
be worth spending time on picking a license. Right now, there's no way of
determining what license is most appropriate for customers when there are not
any.

If a lead (potential customer) says you might get more legitimacy if you open
source, the legitimacy of that lead correlates to the size of check they have
written you before the suggestion. If there is no check, "open source it" is
just "no." To put it another way, when a lead asks for something the value of
that request should be measured by the amount they are willing to pay to have
you implement with the expectation that you will implement it.

Yes, finding customers is hard. It is harder than open sourcing. That's what
makes open sourcing attractive, it's easy. It seems like work. But it isn't.
Without sales to actual customers there isn't a business. Without users, there
isn't a community.

The next step is go out and ask for money. When people say no, it may mean
that the product isn't valuable. It may mean that you haven't identified the
right potential customers. It may mean that you haven't talked to enough
people. It may mean that you have not asked that person enough times.

Good luck.

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dgarud
ScrapingHub was something I was interested in - as an example of opensource
project which the founders used as a base to build a company. Does it help to
use their model for you - [https://blog.scrapinghub.com/2015/03/16/history-of-
scrapingh...](https://blog.scrapinghub.com/2015/03/16/history-of-scrapinghub)

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verdverm
I'm considering doing the same. My rational is that it's a developer(ment)
focused framework.

Are there other open source projects that are trying to be the same? Could you
become the defacto open source option? How easy would it be to replace your
product vs. tool? Can you keep some closed source for Enterprise / on-prem?

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lioeters
Here's an article that may contribute to your decision: Open Source (Almost)
Everything.

[http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-
everyth...](http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-
everything.html)

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dennisy
I think there are many other things you can do before going open source - the
site needs pricing, in browser demo etc.

Also is your code ready for open source, do you have great docs etc..

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leroman
Thanks, but the product is not SaaS at this time, its on-prem, so pricing is
not so relevant..

Docs & other resources will come along with open-sourcing the code

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stockkid
> I might get more legitimacy / traction / business if I go open-source.

What is the reasoning behind this?

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leroman
I'm not based out of SF (where I hear it's much easier to get noticed) and my
network here in Israel is not so strong that a blog post makes any splash, my
concern is that just from looking at the landing page even a technical
prospects may think this is nothing fancy. By open sourcing it I hope to get
the technical crowd to find out its actually a very advanced piece of
software.

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throwaway89586
> if so under which license?

GPLv3 or later if it's a program that runs on a user's computer.

AGPLv3 or later if it's a program that runs over a network (webapp on a
server).

