Ask HN: Should I Open Source Every Product I Build as an Indie Developer?
I'm an indie developer who has built several free-to-use tool applications that I plan to monetize through advertising once they gain enough users. My dilemma is whether to open source these products now, or wait until they're more established.
It depends on what you're building and if you're trying to build a business, or just make a few bucks on the side. If you're trying to build a business, your decision to open source it should be in service of that goal. Is it a developer tool/library with a commercial offering that builds on top of it where open-sourcing it is your main marketing source? If so, then that can be a solid strategy. But if they are just regular tools you're building, then likely there are far better marketing strategies than using open-source.
And that is great to want to give back with open source. But if you're just starting out on your business, then that is a major distraction from the main task at hand.
I always want to contribute something to the community, and I think open source is really cool. As an individual developer, I also hope to gain some attention by open-sourcing my own work.
That's what I'm considering. Once my product becomes relatively mature and gains a certain user base, a simple copy by others shouldn't be able to take my users away.
It's simply because I've been immersed in the open-source community for a long time and have received a lot of help from others' open-source projects. I think open-sourcing my own work is a really cool thing to do. Moreover, I genuinely hope to gain more visibility through open source and access new ideas and opportunities.
Yes, I understand. That's precisely why I'm considering not open-sourcing it immediately, but rather doing so after gaining some traction. Alternatively, perhaps I could just open-source some of the tooling components of my product and publish them to NPM.
And that is great to want to give back with open source. But if you're just starting out on your business, then that is a major distraction from the main task at hand.
I find this statement curious because I don't understand why there should be a connection between software being "established" and being open source.
What is your goal here?
If you open-source, what's preventing someone running a quick copy elsewhere?
"do-whatever-you-want license, but with the commercial rights for SaaS reserved for the copyright holder"