[thibaut_barrere]

Following the example of Sidekiq (with Sidekiq Pro), I'm in the process of launching a commercial offering for Kiba ETL (OSS Ruby ETL framework - http://www.kiba-etl.org), dubbed "Kiba Pro".

My take on this is that more developers could try to follow that path, but we lack a bit of guidance (I'm lucky Mike Perham provided some useful insights to guide me actually) to reduce the anxiety & uncertainty associated with such launches.

The hurdles can be numerous & blocking:

- IP - making sure your consulting contracts are IP-safe

- Proper pricing (how do you segment your offer? how to avoid pricing "ceiling" effect etc)

- Distribution (e.g. I'm using http://packagecloud.io for our "paid gem")

- Proper custom ToS

- Product related theory such as "how to create leads channels" etc

- Billing & invoicing

- etc

Personally, I've decided not to attempt to "monetize" the OSS part, but rather launch a paid counterpart covering more advanced uses or built-in components.

[siscia]

I am in the process of doing something similar with rediSQL [https://github.com/RedBeardLab/rediSQL].

I would love any further feedback you can share.

[thibaut_barrere]

I will definitely share more in a future blog post (subscribe at http://thibautbarrere.com). Emailing you to make sure you have the information.

[siscia]

Great, thanks :)

[deedubaya]

This is a process nearly every Enterprise oriented SaaS, a lot of which are built with Ruby/Rails. I think there is a lot of room for this to take off for you!

http://www.kiba-etl.org/ could use some work in stating the business problem and how Kiba can ease the pain of growing your own ETL. If you're not sure what an ETL is (or what problem they solve), the landing page provides 0 justification into reading more.

[thibaut_barrere]

Thanks! Yes I feel there is something that deserves to be done here.

This is some great feedback - and yes, a new landing page is definitely planned!