[jqpabc123]

Is there ever a point where we can just accept the reality that "open source marketing" is really kind of an oxymoron?

If you want to give your work away for whatever reason, I salute you.

I know it's hard to believe but trying to monetize what is available for free just doesn't meet with a whole lot of success in most cases. And it is really misleading to keep suggesting otherwise.

[sharmi]

Even if the open source contributor does not intend to monetize (not that there is anything wrong with that), even in it's core idea, it is still essential for open source contributors to know marketing.

1. As someone below said, even if you give away for free, people need to know what it is and where to find it. If you do not market, then you are just singing a beautiful song into the Void.

2. For an open source contribution to live and be useful, it needs to be maintained and evolve with the time and needs. That needs a healthy community around the project.

3. Open Source contributors are also living lives and there will come a time when they need to step back. This should not have a debilitating effect on the continuity of the project.

4. Also having a healthy community that supports in dev, responding to issues, documentation etc will have a positive impact on the contributor's mental health in the long term.

[xyzzy_plugh]

I'm confused by this comment. What does marketing have to do with open source at all? I don't care if anyone ever uses my software. It succeeds by virtue of being open source.

Open source software does not require a community to form around it. Software can be "done" and in low to no maintenance mode. It doesn't need to evolve with the time. It just is.

I welcome the discourse around healthy community building but I really dislike this trend of conflating community with open source as if somehow it's a property of free and open source software. It ain't.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

> What does marketing have to do with open source at all? I don't care if anyone ever uses my software.

You just answered your own question!

If you care about people using your own software, then the best approach is to market it. Otherwise, why bother?

[luckylion]

For individuals, that's true: free always wins. It's different for corporations, they'll often pay for more commercial licensing or support. Unlike individuals, they're also often happy to pay because they'll spend money either way: buying vs paying someone to build/figure out.

And I don't see that as an oxymoron. If you believe that something is worthy of sinking your time into it, and you believe that it should be open source, and you're not filthy rich and can afford to do it as a charity, you'll need to get paid somehow. And for that, you need marketing.

And more generally, I'd love it if more open source developers adopted a business-approach to onboarding. "Here's what our product does, here are some use-cases it solves, here's how to get started quickly, and there is the documentation with plenty of working real-world examples" is just so much better than "here's some code that might or might not be what you're looking for, works for me, whatever".

[boomahora]

100% right for corporations. When speaking with some security professionals, one aspect they look for in open-source projects is whether it has a monetization plan behind it. This is to give some assurance that there is longevity to the project and that it won't be forgotten about in the future.

[boomahora]

If you want to give your work away for free, people still need to hear about it some way, which would be the marketing side of it.

I think it's only misleading when someone markets their open source project without being up front about their monetization strategy (whether they have one or don't)

[jqpabc123]

people still need to hear about it some way, which would be the marketing side of it.

*Marketing* as defined in the article is specifically about monetizing and generating income from open source in some way.

     *This article is aimed at commercial open-source software (COSS)*

[kapep]

Where's the oxymoron then? Open-source can be monetized. Marketing can help with that. I don't see any issues with the term "open-source marketing".

[wahnfrieden]

They’re essentially just saying “it’s hard”

[mejutoco]

You can make money with open source, so there is no contradiction.

As an example, imagine an open source library where you sell support for certain use cases. Marketing your library will bring you extra revenues.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Don't know about that. I make money designing & building Arduino-based systems for lots of people and Arduino is all about Open Source H/W & S/W.

There are many, many people for whom "free" isn't good enough.

[mindover]

Seems like you are equating open source to free. No reason to do that - you can have a monetized open source product.