I'd rather leave $ on the table if it means enabling independent devs (especially those in developing economies) to make $$$

Logged in just to say congrats, this attitude is seldom encountered, even among those building their products almost entirely on freely available foundations.

That’s the craziest thing to me. There’s no reason OSS has to be a thing. Here’s to hoping greed never kills it.

Being compensated for one’s efforts isn’t greed, and for-profit software can also be open-source.

To each their own. It’s a cool project.

I’ve spent a lot of time contributing to OSS, created popular OSS projects, and I felt pretty shitty when I realized other companies were using the software to make money and I hadn’t done anything to ensure I was compensated.

Not at all, I was more speaking to companies that lean heavily on OSS without giving back, which sounds like your experience. Would love to pick your brain sometime if you’re open to sharing any lessons you’ve learned along the way.

<3 that is admirable.

Thank you

I'd research that claim before putting too much into monetizing a product like this. There are a veritable boatload of CMS tools available these days, most of which are free. You pay more for making it easy for non-tech folk to use, but at some point the market drives people to hire a webmaster, not pay license fees for a tool.

I've told the story before, but we did a CMS very similar to this back in 1999/2000, and was able to charge 5-6 figures to Fortune 500 companies for a license. But that market crashed. CMS is just a specific flavor of CRUD apps, and most web devs can make one, so they just don't have the same price point as they used to.

That doesn't invalidate the work put into this CMS. I like what I can see of it. It looks like a good piece of work. But most CMS successes these days do give away the core tool for free, then make money on plugins, hosting, and services.

I'd say leave it free to individuals and charge companies. This seems like it's the play here but idk.

I don't get it.

There are dozens of amazing open source projects posted on HN every week, and on average, the ones out of these that are outstanding and could be turned into a business model are countless every month.

So I don't understand what makes this project stand out so much that it's like leaving money on the table. (this is the first time I'm seeing a comment where the money is apparently on the table because the project is so good).

Good software product/service is a tiny aspect of doing business and turning a profit. The money doesn't appear magically on the table!

Because lots of us see where this fits in the market. Businesses want to leave wordpress, and wix/squarespace are almost exclusively targeting non-technical users.

This type of approach lets a technical person work with the marketing team so that the site can be both easy to update and optimized for business needs.

You’re right that good software/service does not automatically mean profit, but you’re missing the understanding that if you serve a hungry demographic, you only need a MVP to bring in revenue.

I tried forestry and found the static site development very fragmented. There are:

1. git service providers 2. SSGs 3. CMSs 4. Static site hosting providers

If one is targeting end users who just want to write, it's quite hard to beat WordPress since the experience is completely streamlined.

Who says businesses are trying to leave Wordpress? Anyone got any data backing the claim?

I just don’t see it. Ghost already tried and gave up. There’s tons of Wordpress competitors out there. I could be wrong but where’s the data?

My personal experience as a freelance wordpress tuner.

Part of the problem is the drain of the plugins they load up, but invariably Wordpress would be far less useful to them without those plugins, so they just end up wrestling with it all the time wishing there was an alternative.

I'm curious, do you have any data backing your claim that Ghost 'tried and gave up'? Just wondering.

Absolutely. And far too often the profit side chokes the product side.

At least for some people, not everything is about making money and in our field there are plenty of examples.

I completely agree, OP could absolutely make this a COSS (commercial open source software) service.

That's the goal :) But without artificially limiting features.

A big fan of that approach right now: have enough money coming in through “patrons”, sponsors, or business licenses that the product/technology itself can be free