Business based on an open source project

vitobotta

Does anyone here have experience launching a business based on an open source project? Like, offering the whole source code as open source for self hosting, together with a managed/hosted version of the same thing? I would love to hear about experiences, challenges and anything that might be worth knowing about this kind of operation.

yusra

As far as I heard from friends, it can be done via various licensing models and/or gaining traction such that the monetary side of things comes from providing enterprise-grade support/features.

vitobotta

@yusra said:
As far as I heard from friends, it can be done via various licensing models and/or gaining traction such that the monetary side of things comes from providing enterprise-grade support/features.

I was thinking to to do something like Coolify, which doesn't limit features in the self hosted version so it's a guarantee of continuity for potential custoemrs

Otus9051

isnt that exactly what canonical is... kinda?

vitobotta

Coolify has an Apache license, which doesn't prevent others from selling it as a service. I find this weird. If I go for something similar I want to ensure that noone can compete with me with my own software

Bochi

One recent (successful) example that comes to mind: plausible.io
They have good blog posts and maybe you can even reach out to them.

FatGrizzly

you mean gitlab,posthog,chatwoot etc?

vitobotta

@Bochi said:
One recent (successful) example that comes to mind: plausible.io
They have good blog posts and maybe you can even reach out to them.

Good example with Plausible. They are indeed a success story as open source business

@FatGrizzly said:
you mean gitlab,posthog,chatwoot etc?

Oh, I should have thought of Gitlab. I am not familiar with the others but will look into them.

wankel

@vitobotta said:

Does anyone here have experience launching a business based on an open source project?

I understood "personal experience with their own business".

If the 'own business' is not a requirement, there are many you must already know. To name a few: proxmox.com, matrix.org, redhat.com. Even though Proxmox is fully open source, they run a profitable business themselves in a wider ecosystem of Proxmox services providers.

I'll keep a tab on the discussion: the place where I work has some kind of 'open core' model, as it is called. I hope to push/lure them into (full) open source, giving back instead of only consuming, even if it is only with part of the portfolio.