Mismatched growth: If your paid offering takes off but your OSS doesn't
Let’s talk more about growth, specifically the relationship between OSS and business metrics. An open source project can really have two kinds of mismatched growth: the open source project is thriving but revenue is stagnant (probably more common) and the money is pouring in but open source growth is stagnant.
Let’s address the previous first, since if your ultimate goal is a profitable business it is the more concerning.
If you’re in this situation, here are some concrete steps you should take, now:
Really think about whether or not this project is a good fit for monetization. Some open source projects are popular because they’re fun, or developers love them. But they aren’t critical and don’t have much of a value prop for non-developers. If your project could go down and it wouldn’t matter for your users’ business, the project is probably not a good fit for monetization.
Make sure people know the commercial product exists. This seems so basic, but I’ve seen companies where the brand for the OSS and the company were so removed from each other that I couldn’t see how one could possibly impact the other in any way, positive or negative.
Do you have a clear value prop for your commercial product that goes beyond the value prop for your OSS? If potential customers can’t see any difference between the open source and the paid offering, why should they pay?
Are you clear, both for yourself and in your communications, who the audience is for the OSS and for the commercial product? If they are exactly the same, you need to change that. And that means not just changing your communications, potentially, but also changing your roadmap. The audience for your open source project and commercial offering should not be identical.
Last, definitely not least: Talk to people. Talk to your users, talk to the customers you do have, talk to prospects, talking to lost deals. Ask probing questions. Make sure you’re listening for cues that they might be just being polite and not speaking their mind.
If you’re sure your project is in the critical path, chances are a disconnect between OSS growth and revenue growth is because your commercial strategy isn’t working. The steps above will help you get on the right track for fixing it.