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How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

indiehackers.com

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Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#51

Post by tyingq »

gen220 wrote: post #48
tyingq wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be a bit wary of something as important as invoices on the Rpi storage though. Hopefully there's some automatic backup.

You can boot the RPI off of an SSD nowadays, or boot off an SD card with the root file system on an SSD. I also used to be concerned about persisting data on a RPIs because of the SD card problem. But this setup is quite comparable to a standard Linux box with no replication. From there you can setup ZFS if you care to, or be satisfied with daily backups to the cloud.

I poked around and found her product page for the Rpi device, and she does couple it with a 120GB SSD and two USB sticks for backup. https://www.open3a.de/page-open3ABox

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#52

Post by snthd »

mosaic_school wrote: post #7

Please correct me if I'm wrong but this is not how I understand the meaning of "open source software". It sounds rather like customers get source access. Do they have the right to sell the source code or re-release it in any way by following an open source license? ( https://opensource.org/licenses ) P.S. I'm not criticizing your business model or anyone elses.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#53

Post by ryanmarsh »

I made a great deal of money for a few years providing training and support for the founders of a popular mature open source project.

There's no customer success team for open source software, I don't care how good the community is. A significant chunk of the money charged for my services went back to the founders to continue their work. This is a fantastic model for open source.

I encourage more people to connect with the founders of popular projects and arrange a system whereby you can offer training and support on their behalf and in their name (obviously they should vet you). I'm happy to discuss the particulars of this, including how to sell training and support, how to handle contracts, logistics, all of it. I know this business well and I think it is a net good for all involved. Email is in by bio.

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#54

Post by jrochkind1 »

jpetso wrote: post #16
clcaev wrote: post #2

[revision] In the comments section, following the article, she notes the extensions are open source, distributed when purchased. The license used for these extensions is not specified. Thank you for pronoun correction.

Quoting the author from the comments: > Yes, the plugins are open source, too. Customers can test what they will get in an online demo which is available on my website. > They get the functionality as well as the code after they bought the extension in my shop.

This is a bit confusing to me. They sell the plugins, but also the plugins are licensed that a customer can redistribute them to other customers legally?

At first it sounded like 'open core' with the plugins not being open source, but if the plugins are open source too... I guess people pay for them, priced modestly, just for the convenience and support?

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#56

Post by jasonlotito »

meijer wrote: post #35

Pretty great. This is how I would like to work, too. Of course, it would be nice to know how much money the author makes with this product...

Clicking through, there is this page: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/open3a

It mentions 9k/mo.

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#57

Post by jasonlotito »

kgwgk wrote: post #44

Potential next episode: someone is taking advantage of my open source software, it's getting harder to sell it and earn a living.

The software is licensed under the AGPL. So, that would be an interesting article to see if someone was taking the code and repackaging it.

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#59

Post by Avshalom »

kgwgk wrote: post #44

Potential next episode: someone is taking advantage of my open source software, it's getting harder to sell it and earn a living.

She doesn't mention when it started paying her all her bills exactly but the cloud version started in 2013 and the CD from 2010 so presumably it's been her full time living for at least most of a decade. Even if it all comes apart tomorrow that's still a pretty good run for any single product/sole proprietor-ish small business.

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#60

Post by koonsolo »

I wonder how much benefit there was from open sourcing the project: in other words, how many contributors helped out, or how many customers would refuse to buy it when it's not open source.

Asking this because sometimes I also wonder if I should open source my project, but I have my doubts on how much you can gain from it (apart from the nice feeling of contributing to open source ;))

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