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Ask HN: Is open-sourcing your SaaS a good idea?

3 points by somada141 ↗ HN
So I have an idea I've been building into a SaaS for a while. Without going into specifics the idea is about collecting data from governmental health-related resources, augmenting the data (eg identifying user-provided locations through Google Maps), joining across different data-sources, canonicalising etc, and then allowing the user to search through it in a way that's IMHO much more intuitive than what's provided in the original resources. In addition, given that official sources tend to be obtuse my aim was to simplify the information and make it understandable to the layperson.

Now given that this is centered in the health-industry privacy becomes even more pivotal as I wouldn't want some random SaaS company collecting information pertaining to my health and selling it or utilising in nefarious ways.

Thus, I was thinking, what better way to prove that my service is doing none of that than open-sourcing my code and offering the paid service as the way to use it. Would that 'gesture' be enough to put peoples' minds at ease and prove that I have no intention or desire in tracking them?

As an added bonus I was hoping that open-sourcing the code would help reinvigorate my resolve as my velocity has been dropping and my self-preservation instincts have me second-guessing my idea and its usefulness. Part of me was hoping that open-sourcing the code would: (1) force me to do it better cause people other than me may see it (2) help validate the idea and its marketability (3) potentially let interested parties help me make the code better and (4) allow me to use other open-source-friendly services like CI/CD for free since in the interest of keeping this service as private and 'true' as I can get it I'm doing it all out-of-pocket and am not interested in receiving funding for it.

What do y'all think?

Edit: I should've mentioned that I'm well-aware that someone may scoop my idea, do it better/faster, and I would have contributed to someone else's potential success. My code is nothing magical apart from it being heaps of work and the primary challenge is getting the service to work efficiently without breaking the bank hence my question.

5 comments

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BA4gDY-cqjsEPWn
Most likely, in my opinion, there's already plenty of paid solutions out there and the bad things you are concerned about are already happening on a massive scale.
somada141
I understand that, and most services throw that "we take your privacy very seriously" bit whether that is the case or not. I was simply wondering whether open-sourcing would prove that I actually do :)
caryd
Anyone who can read through your source code can make the program themselves. Someone would want to buy the service because they can't program nor read your code. Make it a guarantee if you think it is a selling point.
somada141
I guess in a way I was hoping that setting this up for oneself wouldn't be worth the 10-20$/m I would charge for access to it.

Mind you this would include DBs, servers to keep the data up-to-date, GraphQL servers to serve the data, etc. I guess it would be akin to the ElasticSearch model where one can set it up by themselves where for simple usage one would end up spending less time and money if they were to pay for my hosted solution.

somada141
That being said I see your point, my market wouldn't be limited to the techie type but rather people that wouldn't be able to read my code let alone verify the lack of tracking.