Almost a year ago, I made a decision that many founders would consider stupid.
I open-sourced my product. Not part of it. Not an SDK. The whole thing.
The product is BlogBowl - an open-source platform for blogs, changelogs, and help documentation made for B2B.
Today it has around 149 GitHub stars and has generated over $3,123 in revenue.
For some people, that's not much money. For me, it's proof that open source can work.
What's next?
I'm still actively working on BlogBowl, and a couple of changes are probably coming soon.
1. First, I'm planning to remove the free hosted plan.
I don't think it makes much sense to offer both a free hosted plan and an open-source version.
If budget is the reason someone can't pay for BlogBowl, they can self-host it for free. That's one of the biggest benefits of open source.
- Second, I want to bring AI directly into the editor.
What interests me more is AI that helps people write faster and maintain content over time.
Things like:
- Improving paragraphs
- Rewriting sections
- Expanding ideas
- Updating documentation
- Fixing grammar and formatting
Here's how editor looks like now
Final thoughts
Open-sourcing BlogBowl felt risky when I did it.
Looking back, keeping it closed probably would've been the bigger risk.
Today the project has:
- 149 GitHub stars
- $3,123 in revenue
- Customers using it for blogs, changelogs, and documentation
That's enough motivation to keep building.
If you'd like to check it out - or drop a star - I'd really appreciate it ❤️
https://github.com/BlogBowl/BlogBowl
Top comments (2)
Removing the free hosted plan makes sense — if someone can self-host, they should. The $3k from a fully open-sourced product is actually impressive; most people assume open core is the only way to monetize. What's your split between one-time purchases vs recurring? Curious whether the changelog/docs angle is bringing in more B2B customers than the blog side.
I never had one-time purchases tbh, but initial proposition of BlogBowl was a bit different! So most of sales were recurring even though there was a high churn.
I'd say blogs are more popular than changelog/docs