I recently launched Postiz, an open-source social media scheduling tool. After four months, it's making $2.1k per month! Thanks to open-source soft...
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What if someone copies it and launches a thing of their own?
This is the thing that scares me the most.
Someone would copy your idea is a resistance/excuse not to build the thing.
No one can copy your version your audience your market.
Just build the damn thing and see what happens.
Solid advice right there 🤘
If I had copied Facebook, would I have been a successful company?
No, because the most important thing is the brand.
Also, it is frowned upon, if somebody copy it, and you share it on social it would hurt the brand of the company.
Search for PearAI.
You can also protect your project with a license, if somebody go against the license you can potentially sue them.
Also, Forem is open-source (dev.to),
You don't see a competing platform everyday :)
Facebook is already established, so it's not really a good comparison. If you had copied it at an early stage and marketed it better than they did, you might have been successful. I have used many open-source projects where the fork was much better.
Correct! Prime example being Cursor which is a fork of VSCode.
ideas are not that important or unique. everyone has an idea, young and old, not everyone has execution. having an idea is like wanting to workout, people want to work out but very few live that lifestyle, work out and are in good shape. So don't be afraid someone will "steal" your ideas cause there's probably a million people out there with the same "unique" idea.
most of the work is in the building. ideas are the easy part, they don't require anything, you could sit down and have an idea. Going to market, validating your ideas, building an audience, implementing user feedback, gaining user trust, failing, standing back up, building momentum, not giving up, those are the hard parts. No one can steal this. this is where most of the work is. Remember there's a huge diff btn an idea and a product. People don't invest in ideas, they invest in the people behind them, people don't buy ideas, the buy products. Someone can steal your idea, they cant steal your product
"You have the original copy of your thoughts"
Best thing that can happen. OS Markets kind of double their size after a while.
Someone can always copy your idea without having access to the code. Facebook/Meta famously stole the stories feature from Snapchat and added it to all their apps.
The most difficult part about building new tech is getting other people to use it and convincing them that it is valuable to them. That's going to be way harder than writing the actual code.
Hi, wondering about the monetisation part?
Also, what do you think about open source but with a non commercial & no derivatives license?
In Postiz, I monetize primarily from the cloud, but if I wanted to run a larger team, I could push big enterprises into a self-hosting plan with support.
"Also, what do you think about open source but with a noncommercial & no derivatives license?" do you mean MIT / APACHE2 / AGPL3?
All the licenses you mentioned are open source by definition. There is no restrictions such as non-commercial or no derivatives. A license applying those restrictions is not technically speaking "Open source" even if the source code is made available. The pro is that it is easier to monetize. The con is that open source purists will not value your software.
Now this is the theory but I was wondering to which extent making the source code available but not strictly speaking "Open source" would slow down the growth of an app's community in practice
Indeed, a non-commercial clause license is by definition a non open-source license. The advantage of such licenses (like the creative commons nc-nd, for example) is that they are still instruments of copyright law alone, unlike many classic proprietary licenses and "EULAs". This means you can use them as is rather than having to hire an expensive lawyer to draft a user agreement and get the contract law language correct.
If you have commercial users and no community interest or contribution whatsoever anyway, I think the creative commons approach is both simplest and least costly.
Thanks for the advice ☺️
This is such an inspiring! Open-source provides an amazing platform for developers to showcase their skills, collaborate with others, and i guess its even build a sustainable businesses.
Would love to hear more about strategies to monetize open-source projects effectively. Are you thinking about sponsorships, SaaS models, or paid consulting?
Anyone else in the community made this transition? Share your stories!(PS: Don't forget to share😉)
In Postiz I monetize mostly from the cloud, but if I wanted to run a larger team, I could push big enterprises into a self hosting plan with support.
I like the idea of Postiz, but I don't think large companies really want a social media spam bot* :)
*🤓 erm actually it is a timed shedshuled shoshial media API
Really awesome tool and loved the entire article. Are there any downsides to monetizing an open source app? Like people doing forks etc, I'm just curious how do oss maintainers deal with this.
Well, the main goal of open-source is for people to fork it and use it :)
I don't think there is a downside, most people that fork and use it, would not pay for it anyway :)
I love this take, I mean that's what open source stands for! 💪
Then there are the people that try to self-host and realize it's harder than they thought and end up just going with the managed service because it's simpler.
very detailed, thank you do posting!
🙏🏻
Nothing is ever easy in life, but it is easier using open-source.
Bookmarked
🙏🏻
Adding on to @cedric_bonjour , open source programs cannot be monetized. All funds from it are supposed to be used on the site. That's the whole purpose of open-source! Free! Using open-source donations and stuff for your own benefit is illegal 😱😱😱. I hope this is just a misunderstanding on my part and you aren't doing this 😅!
Okay. So you are just using open sourced programs to give people incentives to buy your paid products? Awesome marketing am I right? 😆
While this is a great post, I think you are just using this to advertise your paid services, notably Gitroom. 😱
A web dev with 3 open source projects that each took a week to make be writing a whole paragraph criticizing somebody of marketing ;)
You are right; pure open-source is free, and Postiz is 100% free (AGPL 3)
There are non-open source licenses that people put in, but it is not considered to be "open-source."
Postiz benefits people who want to use the cloud without taking care of the rest :)
Gitroom is mostly to help people; there are no real monetization things there yet; if something, this post is trying to convey to people to Postiz open-source.
Open-source software isn't the same as free software. When we say "free", we don't refer to money: we refer to the freedom of the users. See gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-mis...
I know that we generally use "free" and "open-source" as synonyms, but sometimes the difference matters ;)
open-source is free, actually, you mean "self-hosted" which is not necessarily free, I have seen a few of interesting topics on Reddit :)
Did you even read the link I posted above?
(or below gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html)
Ahh, I see! Well, I'm not the police, so I'll stop annoying you now. Thanks for your professionalism on the reply! I would have expected an angry Karen to yell at me for disturbing them :)
Where is the $2k coming from? Just wondering! I want money lol
From the cloud registration of Postiz :)
It's fine to sell open-source / free software, according to the Free Software Fundation itself: gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
(I found the link at the bottom of fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software)
How do you motivate people to participate in a project? I see 41 contributors but LinkedIn says Postiz has 2 - 10 employees. All of them found your project on their own the posts you have published or did you do something else to find contributors?
Your idea is excellent. Congratulations on your approach. I don't understand those who talk about copying your idea. Building something is just part of the story. selling it is another thing. And then you have your basic idea with you and then a lot of things are made possible today thanks to open source projects. If we all had to pay for everything, it would be very difficult to move forward. So I'm telling you that your idea is great and even if someone copies it tomorrow, that person won't take what you earn from your idea.
Great post, Nevo! 🙌
Speaking of empowering developers, we recently launched Exocoding, and it’s free to use. It’s a code generation platform designed to give devs the freedom they need: no low-code constraints or vendor lock-in. Perfect for building projects faster (and who knows, maybe even kickstarting a new open-source startup)!
Would love to hear your thoughts if you get a chance to check it out!
Thanks for the article.
But, how do you make money from it if it is free and open-source? I read your comments about making money from the cloud, how does this work? What is stopping the companies/people from using your source code and deploying it on cloud themselves?
Thanks for the idea, bro! 🤘
I’m already thinking about how to make it my own.
Appreciate the inspiration! 💡
I've been developing an Alpha version for a unique open source project (that will have some strict conditions for the sake of collective formatting) but I'm an ideas guy that has been tinkering and it seems I turn a page and run into a world of new things to learn.
I wonder if there are code experts who are seeking an idea to partner on?!
Can anyone recommend a place to go to connect with coders looking for projects for open source building I can pitch and recruit? If I build it myself, I fear, I will forever be chasing educating myself in the structure and execution realm. I am willing to do a lot of work and not just throw an idea at someone.
I'm still a junior, but I aspire to reach this level someday. Thanks for the encouragement!
How I can have payment method to my Saas or startup ?
Needed this info! Thanks!
Great article
Such a valuable read—keep them coming!
That's an inspiring story!
Thanks for sharing Nevo
Guys I need Suggestions
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