Business based on an open source project

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.

Lead Platform Architect at the day job, Ethical Hacker/Bug Bounty Hunter on the side

Comments

  • 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.

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  • @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

    Lead Platform Architect at the day job, Ethical Hacker/Bug Bounty Hunter on the side

  • isnt that exactly what canonical is... kinda?

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    youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU

  • 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

    Lead Platform Architect at the day job, Ethical Hacker/Bug Bounty Hunter on the side

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

  • FatGrizzlyFatGrizzly Hosting Provider

    you mean gitlab,posthog,chatwoot etc?

  • @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.

    Lead Platform Architect at the day job, Ethical Hacker/Bug Bounty Hunter on the side

  • @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.

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