Ask HN: Tips on Open Sourcing a Project as a Small Team with Paying Customers?

[greens231]

Hi HN,

We’re a two-person team working on a side project(devtool). We’ve been considering open-sourcing it, but we have a couple of paying customers, and most of our time is spent handling their requests and improving the product.

We’re wondering how feasible it is to manage an open-source project alongside paying customers as such a small team. Specifically, we’d love to hear from other small teams who’ve:

- Open-sourced a project while juggling paying customers.

- Managed expectations between open-source contributors and paying customers.

- Found strategies to avoid burnout while maintaining both the business and the open-source side.

Would love to learn from your experiences—any tips, lessons, or advice would be greatly appreciated!