Indie Open Sourcedeveloping resource for indie-ready business models
Over the past few years, I’ve had an incredible number of deep conversations about open source business models with solo hackers and small firms off the VC-funded track. Nearly all of those calls ended the same way:
We should really get together and do something about how hard it is for indies to find out about business models that work for them.
At some point, I started adding these folks to an empty GitHub organization, indieopensource. Today, I’m pleased to announce that the org is no longer empty. We’ve begun fleshing out indieopensource.com as the resource we all wish we’d had ourselves, much earlier.
Within scope:
-
guides to business models that work well for solo and small-firm developers, like paid support and public-private licensing
-
explainers for users and outside contributors of projects running those models
-
a showcase of companies running those models, like Metafizzy and Sidekiq
-
a collection of legal forms useful for those models, including a paid license, a support contract, and a tiny contributor license agreement
-
a directory of service providers helping to make business models cheaper and easier to run
We’re not stressing what it means to be an “indie”. Rather, we’re sending out a signal to collect new writing, data, and tools for mutual aid. We’re trying to become a shared and codeveloped resource.
As for contribution, the project is very young, and has all the needs: design, writing, links, data about companies and service providers. The action is all under the GitHub organization, especially the repository for indieopensource.com.
Your thoughts and feedback are always welcome by e-mail.