Marketing advice from open source founders
cannon.wtf
cannon.wtf
Unlike the article might indirectly imply, I see little difference in the key characteristics that determine effective marketing.
Both product types need a clear and consistent messaging, both need to build an audience, both need to bring value to the customer, both need to be transparent about the pricing, both need to be clear how they handle data, both need to provide great support etc.
Where I see a potential difference is in the customer type. Some of our customers prefer the open source version because it easy to make changes on the hardware as well as the software. However this also often means a little bit more work to get it up and running. Whereas other customers actually prefer the closed source product as it is bascially plug and play.
What I personally do like with having both products and dealing with both types of customers, is that it gives the chance to "market" the open source version to customers that often have not considered this route in the past but actually provides them with the better fit and better value.
However, IMHO of equal - if not GREATER - importance and entirely missed from the blog post is "be clear about what you are doing with people's data".
You might well have just written the next unicorn dog's bollocks of software, but I (and I suspect many others) couldn't give a rats arse about your "journey" or any other marketing fluff if the practical reality is that you are secretly collecting telemetry all over the place, storing my data to train your AI algorithms and generally engaging in all sorts of other privacy infringing practices.
It is amazing for instance how many note taking apps are cloud based, with so little justification, for something that screams local first so loudly.
You might think that Obsidian / Logseq etc are popular (and they are), but they pale in comparison with Roam, One Note, Evernote, etc. Syncing notes across devices in 2023 should NOT require a permanent copy in a cloud server, but here we are.
If you want to give your work away for whatever reason, I salute you.
I know it's hard to believe but trying to monetize what is available for free just doesn't meet with a whole lot of success in most cases. And it is really misleading to keep suggesting otherwise.
I think it's only misleading when someone markets their open source project without being up front about their monetization strategy (whether they have one or don't)
*Marketing* as defined in the article is specifically about monetizing and generating income from open source in some way.
*This article is aimed at commercial open-source software (COSS)*And I don't see that as an oxymoron. If you believe that something is worthy of sinking your time into it, and you believe that it should be open source, and you're not filthy rich and can afford to do it as a charity, you'll need to get paid somehow. And for that, you need marketing.
And more generally, I'd love it if more open source developers adopted a business-approach to onboarding. "Here's what our product does, here are some use-cases it solves, here's how to get started quickly, and there is the documentation with plenty of working real-world examples" is just so much better than "here's some code that might or might not be what you're looking for, works for me, whatever".
As an example, imagine an open source library where you sell support for certain use cases. Marketing your library will bring you extra revenues.
1. As someone below said, even if you give away for free, people need to know what it is and where to find it. If you do not market, then you are just singing a beautiful song into the Void.
2. For an open source contribution to live and be useful, it needs to be maintained and evolve with the time and needs. That needs a healthy community around the project.
3. Open Source contributors are also living lives and there will come a time when they need to step back. This should not have a debilitating effect on the continuity of the project.
4. Also having a healthy community that supports in dev, responding to issues, documentation etc will have a positive impact on the contributor's mental health in the long term.
Open source software does not require a community to form around it. Software can be "done" and in low to no maintenance mode. It doesn't need to evolve with the time. It just is.
I welcome the discourse around healthy community building but I really dislike this trend of conflating community with open source as if somehow it's a property of free and open source software. It ain't.
You just answered your own question!
If you care about people using your own software, then the best approach is to market it. Otherwise, why bother?
There are many, many people for whom "free" isn't good enough.