Ask HN: How to monetize support of existing free and open-source projects?

Have been managing a few open-source projects for years and have wanted to get paid for the work that I put into it in my spare time. I am aware that it is much more difficult getting people to pay for support for free, open-source projects, especially after the maintainer has been supporting them for free previously, but I feel like I have nothing to lose since the product will only get better if I am more motivated to work on it. Any advice?

If users are submitting pull-requests and you're just too busy to manage the process for free, that's one thing. Good luck charging for that.

But if you have a backlog of enhancements that a bunch of people want but can't/aren't coding themselves, maybe you could run a little campaign to raise $this_much money by $this_deadline in order to deliver $these_features

Come up with something new and simple that is profitable, then cross promote it to your huge following.

I wrote Big Brother (http://bb4.com), and it was 99.5% free (until we sold out to Quest/Dell). Originally a lot of our revenue came from support.

We just offered 3 tiers of support. For $250 a year we'd answer emails. For $500 we promised an answer within a day. For $750, within 4 hours, and for $1000 a month I'd take your phone call.

So, people are paying for your time, and for access... I was shocked my how many people opted for $1000 a month phone support (direct access to the developer/author).

Otherwise, support continues to be provided by a mailing list, group or other mechanism.

Good luck!

I think it depends a lot on context. I used to participate in a free forum. The founder was brilliant at choking off all possible avenues of monetization while bitching endlessly about wanting to make money (edit: mostly to help cover costs, not necessarily profit per se in his case). He did not want to ask for donations and he also did not want to commercialize it. However it was quite popular and outgrowing its hosting solution, which led to lots of complaints of slowness due to traffic load. I thought he should have posted a notice saying "The site is slow because we need to upgrade from x server costing x amount of money per month to y server costing y amount of money per month. When I get enough donations to cover y for a year in advance, I will happily upgrade. Until then, quit your bitchin." Then any time someone complained, link to the notice (with donate button, naturally) and tell them "Put up or shut up". Similar to the webcomic author whose audience was whining he wasn't updating enough and he said "I make x amount at my day job. Match that." Much to his shock, he had $4000.00 in an hour. He said it to say "shut the fuck up". Instead, he ended up quitting his job and doing the comic full time.

So where do you have demand? Find some way to charge for it. That's what I am trying to say. List your assets, list where you have demand, list different ways that might get monetized. Tie pay to what people want from you.

Best of luck.