Ask HN: Should I open source my next project?

[tmdh]

Hi HN,

4-5 years ago, I created a desktop application called Laravel Kit[1] and open sourced it. The repo has almost 1k stars on GitHub. I was eagerly waiting for a single donation to come to my PayPal. Because I was young and needed to make money through coding without the hassle of managing a business. And I managed to get 0$ donation. But I still push updates to it.

I have some software project ideas in my mind and I want to sell them. It's a tool primarily targeted for Linux desktops but can also work on other OSs. I am concerned that the community might not accept the project because it's not open source and they adore FOSS softwares. The tool surely will have some amazing features compared to it's free alternatives. But FOSS doesn't pay the bills.

What is your opinion about this? Should I just improve my software engineering skills as I am currently studying Computer Science at a uni? or should I get on with the business idea?

[1]: https://github.com/tmdh/laravel-kit

[Comevius]

If your market expects you to, then by all means, and for Linux you pretty much have to, in which case you have to figure out a business model that works with that.

But there is a whole lot more to customer development than a public repository. Just because you have built it it doesn't mean that they will come. In fact they never will, because a day is 24 hours, and people only have so much attention to give. Practically none for you. You have to be a grand wizard of marketing and behavioral science to start making money. The trick is to build something niche, something that can take over a smaller, but interconnected network of people. It's how diseases spread too.

> Should I just improve my software engineering skills

They don't matter much. A business is not a programming contest, it's a brand or person people trust to take care of their pain for them. Identifying the pain, learning how to communicate the solution, building a brand around it and creating connections is 90% of the battle.

[DerekBickerton]

> I was eagerly waiting for a single donation to come to my PayPal. Because I was young and needed to make money through coding without the hassle of managing a business. And I managed to get 0$ donation.

Many devs just code for fun, and are not building in business logic at all. The moment you realize coding is just a fun exercise, it frees you from trying to bake in business logic all the time and try to 'monetize' projects.

On the other hand, if money is the main motivator, you need to build in business logic from the outset and be active on the socials to get leads.