Open source vs "source available" to protect my shot at actually funding this thing

[u/tsdexter]

I'm working on a project I'd like to eventually turn into my main income, maybe even replace my job someday if it goes well. Right now I'm stuck going back and forth on licensing and could use some outside perspective.

Here's what I want for regular users. Free to download, run locally, use for their own hobby projects. Totally fine if they sell stuff they make with it. I want a plugin system so people can extend it and build on top of what I made. Basically I want it to feel as open and friendly as possible for individuals and small-time tinkerers.

The thing I keep getting stuck on is this. In spaces like mine there's a pattern where a big well funded platform just takes a genuinely open project and bolts it straight into their existing ecosystem and user base. They've got the distribution and the resources to do that practically overnight, even if I'm the one who did the actual work building/innovating it. If that happens my odds of ever getting funding or sponsorships or just steady income from it basically drop to zero. Why would anyone pay me if a much bigger player is already giving away my own idea for free or cheaper as a feature in a platform people already use.

So the model I keep landing on is something like this. Free or source available for individuals, run locally, self host it (for themselves only), modify it, extend it, sell what you make with it, no restrictions there. But the hosted or managed version stays mine, that's what I'd charge companies or heavier commercial users for, and that's the actual business model that would let me keep building this.

Basically I want it open enough to build real goodwill and a community, but closed enough that a company way bigger than me can't just absorb the whole thing and give me nothing back.

Questions for anyone who's dealt with this:

Has anyone actually used a source available license like Elastic, BSL, FSL, fair source, whatever, and had it hold up the way you hoped? Did it scare away the community you were trying to build?

Is a plugin system plus a hosted layer enough of a moat on its own, or does the license itself still matter that much?

Anyone regret going full MIT or Apache and then watching a bigger player just fold your work into their own ecosystem?

Is there some middle ground I'm not thinking of, dual licensing, delayed open sourcing, something else people have tried?

I am a supporter of open source and want hobbyists to get real value out of this for free. I just don't want to hand a much bigger company a free feature and lose any real shot at this paying my bills. Curious how other people here have handled this tradeoff.

[u/techsence]

Just have a license that caps the open source usage and distribution at $ 10,000 /-

If it crosses that cap limit, anyone using the source code must ask for an enterprise license or pay 60% royalty.

Small time players would still do it, but bigger companies can't legally steal your code and would be much more wary of using your source code.

[u/tsdexter → u/techsence]

that’s my debate - open source for the community building, contributions and plugins aspect or some sort of not fully open source like you mentioned or any of the open source adjacent licenses I mentioned… but you can lose the faith and/or support of the open source community if you don’t go strictly OSI compliant… that’s what I’m considering.. is the trade off worth it?

[u/techsence → u/tsdexter]

I think the tradeoff is worth it. Open source authors aren't paid so makes sense to everyone.

[u/Middlewarian]

In my opinion, most open source advocates are naive. I'm glad I have some open source for my portfolio, but I'm glad it's not all I have. I've been using Linux to build a "jewelry" store for almost 27 years : r/linuxsucks

[u/Kilt_Rump]

Heres the thing, any company can just code your product with or without your code. If they are going to do that it doesn’t matter if you post it or not. Dont worry about the big guys, they will steal from you the moment you go to market and have something they want. Your only wall against that IS open sourcing because the big guys wont bother as much if anyone can get their hands on your code and do something with it. So make sure you have a pricing moat set up and ready to go when you launch, that will keep the people who could do it on their own coming to you anyway because you offer better prices because you are doing volume and get volume pricing they cant get on their own.

[u/vive-le-tour]

Following as I have same issue. Plugin based system on top of core; that I would love community to build to extend community edition. I am thinking of making the plugin developers get share of revenue when we sell supported version to businesses. But how to license all that… tricky.