Ask HN: What are the key decision factors for open sourcing a product?

#1

Post by jonsantillan » Wed, May 08, 2024, 3:47 PM UTC

I'm considering open sourcing the product I'm currently building and am trying to pinpoint the critical decision-making factors involved in this choice. While the benefits of building a community and increasing transparency are appealing, the potential challenges in monetization and control are considerable.

Here are some specific questions I have:

- What are the primary factors that should influence the decision to open source a product? - Under what circumstances does it make more sense to keep a product proprietary?

Would love to hear from those who have faced this decision and learn from your experiences and insights.

Thanks! Jon

Re: Ask HN: What are the key decision factors for open sourcing a product?

#2

Post by yevlasenko » Wed, May 08, 2024, 3:56 PM UTC

Depends what you want to do with it. My experience is only second hand but it seems that it's hard to commercialise open source. Two basic commercialisation strategies would be 1) providing premium support 2) hosting saas of your product. If it is a side project - than open sourcing might give you extra motivation to keep working on it.

From personal experience - I had a couple of open source repositories for javascript components with 3+k stars and it was impossible to monetize and was taking a lot of time and energy to maintain (ultimately giving me depression and I had to abandon those).

Re: Ask HN: What are the key decision factors for open sourcing a product?

#3

Post by jonsantillan » Wed, May 08, 2024, 6:12 PM UTC

yevlasenko wrote: post #2

Depends what you want to do with it. My experience is only second hand but it seems that it's hard to commercialise open source. Two basic commercialisation strategies would be 1) providing premium support 2) hosting saas of your product. If it is a side project - than open sourcing might give you extra motivation to keep working on it. From personal experience - I had a couple of open source repositories for javascr…

3+k stars is amazing. How long it took you to achieve this?

From my side. I have raise a small amount of money however wanted to see if what other people think about open sourcing and made their decision to do it

Re: Ask HN: What are the key decision factors for open sourcing a product?

#4

Post by yevlasenko » Wed, May 08, 2024, 9:13 PM UTC

jonsantillan wrote: post #3

yevlasenko wrote: post #2

Depends what you want to do with it. My experience is only second hand but it seems that it's hard to commercialise open source. Two basic commercialisation strategies would be 1) providing premium support 2) hosting saas of your product. If it is a side project - than open sourcing might give you extra motivation to keep working on it. From personal experience - I had a couple of open source repositories for javascr…

3+k stars is amazing. How long it took you to achieve this? From my side. I have raise a small amount of money however wanted to see if what other people think about open sourcing and made their decision to do it

At the time it organically grew in a year or two, i've added my projects to the "awesome x" lists (like this one https://github.com/enaqx/awesome-react) but thats pretty much it. Overall I think it was a great experience to learn from but I wish I didn't spend so much time on it.