[tommoor]

GitLab, Mattermost, RocketChat would be a few good examples of products that began as OSS alternatives to well-established players.

Outline (https://www.getoutline.com) is successful on most metrics you'd judge a business and OSS project on.

I'm not sure if any of these ever pitched themselves explicitly that way on HN though. I think explicitly labeling as an "Open source alternative" brings a lot of baggage and expectations, and often says more about the maintainers philosophical POV than ability to create a sustainable business ;)

[barrrrald]

GitLab is a really interesting example, but I don't know if it'd have positioned itself as an "open source alternative"

As for Mattermost, RocketChat, and Outline – I think these are great examples of projects positioned this way that haven't broken out. They all seem great, but it's not clear that being an "open source alternative" to Slack really worked for Mattermost...

[willsmith72]

i know of some gigantic companies using self-hosted mattermost for data privacy reasons. perhaps they have less marketing incentive, but i would certainly call that a success

[tommoor]

> I don't know if it'd have positioned itself as an "open source alternative"

It was literally a pixel for pixel open source clone of GitHub for the first few years.

[ThrowawayR2]

GitLab is open core, not open source. They're very clear about that: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2016/07/20/gitlab-is-open-core...

[tommoor]

Ok, cool.