How I made $300K from an open-source side project using dual licensing

Posted by sachinneravath on Wednesday October 08, 2025 @10:34AM
from the paritydeals.com dept.

https://www.paritydeals.com/blog/monetize-open-source-dual-licensing/

( 2 comments | 6 points | on HN )

Re:How I made $300K from an open-source side project using d... by avervaet on Wednesday October 08, 2025 @10:54AM (#45516878)

Really interesting article and perspective for devs in the OSS world looking for greater financial stability. I’m curious, how do you strike a balance between dual licensing and building trust and adoption early on?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How I made $300K from an open-source side project using d... by sachinneravath on Wednesday October 08, 2025 @11:07AM (#45517033)

I built this project about 10 years ago just to learn JavaScript. For a long time, it was a completely free, and I lost interest in it after a while.

Later, when I quit my full time job to build my own startup, I needed something for survival. The first project I picked up again was lightGallery. It was already quite popular back then, so I decided to rewrite it from scratch and implement dual licensing.

So, basically the trust and adoption were built over years when it was free. The monetization came much later.

[ Parent | on HN ]