Ask HN: How to monetize our open source projects?

1 point

9 years ago

Hey guys! First of all, I am not trying to do some shameless plugs but I am really asking for your advice. My employer’s original business is/was project-based work. Our first step into a product business has been a bit depressing as the product (plug-in for connecting Confluence to Exchange) were not highly requested. Our second try has been more successful. We are providing paid support licenses for our open source project [1] to finance the ongoing development. Other internal projects, like [2] or [3] are available for free but we did not make any marketing yet. And this is the point why I am posting this:

- Are we missing any chances in our service description or plans for [1]? Like not providing any service a customer might want?

- As you are - with high probability ;-) - a technical person: Is there any chance to monetize [2] or [3] or is it “too niche”? I am afraid that we are investing time and money into it and not getting any revenue.

- Do you have any general advices how to grow a business with open source products?

I really appreciate your comments!

[1] Next Active Directory Integration - WordPress plug-in for integrating Active Directory authentication, authorization and synchronization (https://active-directory-wp.com/)

[2] backmon - Monitor your backups with OMD/check_mk/Nagios (https://github.com/NeosIT/backmon)

[3] Generic Exchange Transport Agent - Configurable listener for Microsoft Exchange events (https://github.com/NeosIT/generic-exchange-transport-agent)