Ask HN: Should I open-source my bootstrapped product?
My product is a scraping orchestration platform (www.yielder.io) About two months ago, after two years of work, I finally got to the point where the product is ready for prime time. Some feedback I got was that I might get more legitimacy / traction / business if I go open-source. Finding customers is hard and for a technical guy the next steps are not obvious, so I started considering it.
Should I open source my product? if so under which license?
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[random internet advice]
When actual paying customers are driving a move to open source, then it might be worth spending time on picking a license. Right now, there's no way of determining what license is most appropriate for customers when there are not any.
If a lead (potential customer) says you might get more legitimacy if you open source, the legitimacy of that lead correlates to the size of check they have written you before the suggestion. If there is no check, "open source it" is just "no." To put it another way, when a lead asks for something the value of that request should be measured by the amount they are willing to pay to have you implement with the expectation that you will implement it.
Yes, finding customers is hard. It is harder than open sourcing. That's what makes open sourcing attractive, it's easy. It seems like work. But it isn't. Without sales to actual customers there isn't a business. Without users, there isn't a community.
The next step is go out and ask for money. When people say no, it may mean that the product isn't valuable. It may mean that you haven't identified the right potential customers. It may mean that you haven't talked to enough people. It may mean that you have not asked that person enough times.
Good luck.
If your main goal is to gain customers, then I don't think open sourcing is the right strategy. It will be a lot of work and I'm not convinced it will actually net you any customers.
Your efforts would probably be better spent on more traditional marketing tactics like advertising, attending related conferences, creating case studies, etc.
Also, it looks like you are targeting Enterprise customers. Enterprise sales cycles are long and arduous, you might want to chase smaller customers while you work out the kinks. You might want to consider involving a partner with Enterprise sales experience.
ScrapingHub was something I was interested in - as an example of opensource project which the founders used as a base to build a company. Does it help to use their model for you - https://blog.scrapinghub.com/2015/03/16/history-of-scrapinghub ↗
I'm considering doing the same. My rational is that it's a developer(ment) focused framework.
Are there other open source projects that are trying to be the same? Could you become the defacto open source option? How easy would it be to replace your product vs. tool? Can you keep some closed source for Enterprise / on-prem?
Here's an article that may contribute to your decision: Open Source (Almost) Everything.
http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-everything.html ↗