What are you going to get out of open source?
Since I’ve had an increasing number of companies reach out recently to talk about going from closed source to open source as a company, and spinning out a big part of their codebase as an open source project, I’m writing about that this week. I wrote about how going open source isn’t all or nothing yesterday. And today…
Point 2: What do you want out of open source?
When I have conversations with founders who say they want to go open source, my first question for them is always “why?”
Open source strategies can definitely have a payoff… but they also require a real investment. And the payoff that you can get from going open source are not one-size-fits-all. If you’re not clear on what payoff you’re expecting from going open source, you should step back and figure that out before jumping in.
I think of the business value to your startup of going open source as a menu — it’s not completely unlimited, first of all, but there are several very different ways an open source project could contribute to your startup’s growth. You also might get more than one benefit from the open source approach, but probably not all of them.
Most importantly, though, is understanding what the primary one or two business outcomes you want from your open source project to be. This will determine your approach to community building and the relationship between your open source project and the product you offer. If you don’t know what you want out of the open source project, you also can’t measure ROI or iterate to improve results.
And here is a quick a dirty list of what you might get out of an open source project, btw:
Leads, sometimes these are called ‘open source qualified leads.’ This happens to NextCloud.
A better product. This can come about both because you get code contributions (the dream!) but also because you get more feedback, and have a shorter feedback loop. Odoo’s founder has talked publicly about how they get code contributions that make the product better, but while I think actually getting substantial code contributions is fairly rare, getting better feedback is very, very common.
Easier enterprise / government penetration, because the transparency inherent in open source makes it easier to pass security reviews, etc. Mattermost is a good example of this. Or Artefactual, for whom the fact that their software has inherent longevity is a key unique differentiator.
A community. You can build community around a closed-source project, and you don’t need a community to follow an open source strategy, but community is expected with open source and can be a reason to follow an open source strategy.
You want to build an ecosystem.
To build a bounty program for bug fixes.
Which one is your primary for going open source? Figure out how to answer that question before passing go on your plans to open source a part of your codebase.