Project goes private

[jvandenaardweg]

Hi! :-)

I've got a little announcement to make.

As you noticed, there's not a lot of things happening here anymore, which is too bad. I'm currently working hard on a freelance project at a client's office. Which is thé reason I don't have time for this project at the moment and also keep my girlfriend happy during the evenings and weekends.

So, when my freelance project ends, I've decided to work on this project fulltime (on workdays) for at least the next 3 months in a private repository. That's a huge commitment of time, resources and energy. The reason for this is I want to try to scale and monetize it, I don't think open sourcing the whole project is the way to do that.

The first version of Coinaly was a good test to see what needs to be done to scale this project. The current setup only allows a few users concurrently. That's just not working when the project grows bigger. Scaling this project is a costly setup since it involves a cluster of servers, to serve request to exchange API's and still respect their rate limitations. All of this is not free. Hence the monetization part.

Request invite
I've updated the website so you can get an invite when the project is ready for it's first release: https://coinaly.io. You'll be the first to know.

Also, feel free to join the Telegram channel as I try to give an update once in a while: https://t.me/coinaly

If you are in or around Amsterdam, come say hi at WeWork Metropool, since i'll be renting a desk there to work on this project.

Thanks @adis-me for your help, really appreciate it!

I'll remove this Github repo from the public in the next coming weeks.

[ianpaschal]

Awwwwww! I've still been meaning to contribute somehow.

[ianpaschal]

Keep in mind there's some good ways to monetize open source while still taking advantage of the transparency that OS provides as well as helpful contributions. I know a lot of projects that start off closed as the owner is worried about their IP and then open up once they realize OS is more valuable than closed.

[jvandenaardweg]

Thanks for your comment @ianpaschal

I currently lack the knowhow how to monetize this (Open Source) project. Because, in my mind, everybody with the source code can kinda do the same, which prohibits paying for the service, the costs, the time to make it and the maintenance etc...

I'm more looking into ways to create a business around it, instead of doing it for free or on a donation basis.

But, if you got some examples of open source projects, that also generate an income stream, let me know. Would love to know how they do it.

[ianpaschal]

Two of the more obvious ones are:

1. Pay for the binary app, not the source code. It means your very tech minded users could still fork and compile their own copy instead of paying but the vast majority of users don't do this, especially if they want to use the app on iOS.
2. Make some sort of paywalled server integration, either by way of user accounts or a protected API.

We could talk more about it, but there's a middle ground between true FOSS and closed-source. Plus with closed source, people who want to beat whatever monetization you have made will always find a way anyway.

We can talk more about it private if you like.