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Ask HN: Open-source projects that we never heard of them that become profitable?

12 points by umen ↗ HN
Hey HN,

Do you know OSS project which are not famous like we already know well (redis,sidekiq ..)

which created by small team or 1 developer and become their main or side profitable income?

Thanks

12 comments

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patio11
Yes. One (one!) gets there primarily via donations. All the rest are operated as small software companies which happen to have a OSS product available.

To the next obvious question "Who are you talking about?", I'm going to demur, because most people making money in OSS, like most making money selling SaaS (or anything else, for that matter), don't really see much value in getting that fact blabbed on the Internets. Information travels at the speed of (your liquid refreshment of choice).

rajacombinator
Could you expand more on this point? With your background in the space, would be interesting to hear your insights on what proportion of SaaS businesses fall into the secretive vs. “any press or leads are good” categories. And when to go with one strategy or the other.
pkrotich
I developed osTicket and we now have a growing profitable business- we have a SaaS offering and provide commercial support to enterprise users.
stockkid
Interesting. What is your SaaS offering and how does it relate to the open source product?
pkrotich
It’s basically a hosted version of osTicket - Supportsystem.com
umen
Great example , this what I meant when asking . How did you come with the idea for ticketing app ? And why oos?
pkrotich
os for open source. osCommerce was popular then so it influenced naming!
yitchelle
Congrats on the success!

Interesting logo design with the Kangaroo. Is that a pun play of the phonetics of os.. vs Oz.. (slang for Australia) ?

pkrotich
Not really - when osTicket started, circa 2004, having a mascot was the rage - think MySQL etc. Funnily Kangaroo has given us affinity from Australian users... perhaps an osTrich would been a better choice.
croh
FreeSWITCH. You can check any opensource telecom tech. Most contributors turn themselves as consultants.