🔓 Do products benefit from being open source?
We’re not building an open-source product ourselves, and that’s exactly why we thought - let’s talk about it =)
Open source can bring a lot to a product: transparency, community, trust, contributions, and sometimes a completely different way of building distribution.
But it also comes with its own challenges.
You’re opening the code to everyone. Others can build on top of it, fork it, or even create competing products. And if the product is a business, there’s also the question of how you actually monetize it ?
Still, there’s something powerful about building in public and letting people see, use, improve, and contribute to what you’re creating.
So I’m curious about:
Does open source actually give a product a meaningful advantage?
Or does it mostly make sense for certain types of products and communities?
Replies
I think it depends a lot on the product, open source works great when the value is trust and community around the code itself, but for something where the actual product is the service, staying closed probably makes more sense. Distribution-wise its interesting though, people build in public and it becomes marketing on its own
@samran_elahi Thank you for always being in my threads! I’m really looking forward to your answers =)
Yes, you’re right - it’s kind of a marketing channel too.
And what about monetization? How do you think about it?
@adana I think probably open core, keep the base free and open but charge for the enterprise features, support, or hosting. It gives you the trust and community benefit without giving away the part that actually pays the bills.