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How Sidekiq makes $80,000 a month

indiehackers.com

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Re: How Sidekiq makes $80,000 a month

#51

Post by tumbling_stone »

lacampbell wrote: post #24

Great article. I feel like "exciting" applications that made it big get far too much of our attention. There's real value you can create by doing something "boring" like a background job framework. Most business solve boring business needs. Find something you find interesting and exciting, that most people regard as a boring chore - and solve the problem in a tidy, approachable way. Is this a more reliable way to act…

True that. I had been thinking on similar lines myself. If you observe the restaurant industry, an exciting menu isn't the only thing responsible for its success, sure it night help, but most restaurants will have similar items in their menu. The key is boring things like sustaining the business for sufficient time until it crosses a threshold of patronage and consistency in the taste of the food. So yeah, exciting things are overrated.

Re: How Sidekiq makes $80,000 a month

#52

Post by csallen »

ensiferum wrote: post #38
patio11 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be interested in reading this story. Mike has run an enormously value-creating OSS project for several years. It is one of the most interesting technically-oriented business in the Ruby community, and one whose model should be studied with attention by many HN readers. Can I encourage people to have less reflexive skepticism about running a business on the Internet? Plenty of people do it. Some of those bus…

I wasn't referring to sidekiq but to indiehackers.

I've never claimed that anyone built a business "overnight" on Indie Hackers, or anything of the sort.

Re: How Sidekiq makes $80,000 a month

#54

Post by throwaway_2875 »

rickyc091 wrote: post #9
LifeQuestioner wrote: post #7

Can someone please explain the open-source yet earning? Is it that part of the project is open source and the rest is paid and closed source? How to protect products if they're open source?

Correct, sidekiq is open source by default. The pro portion of the code base is closed source. Sidekiq is one almost a must have for any Rails app. I'd imagine some people just want to support him and pay the licensing fee. It reminds me of how people were willing to pay for Pivotal Tracker when it was free. https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/wiki/Commercial-collabora...

I try to start similar dual-licensing model for my project. But I don't get this. The link page and "In order to unambiguously own and sell Sidekiq commercial products, I must have the copyright associated with the entire codebase. Any code you create which is merged must be owned by me. That's not me trying to be a jerk, that's just the way it works." - it has no legal value. I think all contributions are also LGPL unless contributor gives a consent to give up the change as commercial or public domain etc. In my opinion if Sidekiq Pro is forked from Sidekiq then Pro code should be released under LGPL or he should share part of $80k/monthly with all contributors. What about previous contributors' rights when the project switched to LGPL or dual? Can somebody explain this scheme?

Re: How Sidekiq makes $80,000 a month

#55

Post by mperham »

throwaway_2875 wrote: post #54
rickyc091 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, sidekiq is open source by default. The pro portion of the code base is closed source. Sidekiq is one almost a must have for any Rails app. I'd imagine some people just want to support him and pay the licensing fee. It reminds me of how people were willing to pay for Pivotal Tracker when it was free. https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/wiki/Commercial-collabora...

I try to start similar dual-licensing model for my project. But I don't get this. The link page and "In order to unambiguously own and sell Sidekiq commercial products, I must have the copyright associated with the entire codebase. Any code you create which is merged must be owned by me. That's not me trying to be a jerk, that's just the way it works." - it has no legal value. I think all contributions are also LGPL…

Changes contributed to Sidekiq are LGPL. Changes contributed to Sidekiq Pro must also assign rights for those changes to me so I can sell them. I do have customers who have access to the Sidekiq Pro source code and send me pull requests when they find bugs or enhancements.
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