Making a project public on GitHub
I've spent the last year or so building a project with Angular on Firebase. Now that it is working pretty well, I'm considering gutting my project to generate a template using Angular, Firebase, Google Authentication, Email Authentication, Firestore integration, Cloud functions integration, Analytics, Multi-project deployment, and Local emulation.
I envision the process for starting a new project going something like: cloning the repo, creating a firebase project, adding Firebase connection details, and bingo.
My questions are:
-
Have you ever made a project source public? If so, was it a positive and productive experience? Do you have any good examples of this?
-
Am I better off turning this into a revenue stream? If so, would you pay for something like this, and do you have any good examples of what this looks like?
People pay for convenience -- so unless the code is like a 10X gain, and a 0.1x self install (Eg. a node package) I don't think you're loosing out on the meaningful revenue streams and will probably gain more in awareness. The bootstrapped dev might go the self install route, but they aren't really a meaningful revenue stream anyhow, and you still need to stand out even if the project is free.
My past experiences w/ open code bases have gone well -- you get people that fix errors for you, and add features they want w/o you having to do the heavy lifting. There is a bit of a community management work that goes along with it and people can get feisty when you're not going to add their feature b/c it doesn't fit with your needs, but in general I say the benefits out way the downside.
If the product solves a need and people know about it, there is always a way to monetize it.
Thanks for the input. When going the OS route, do people simply make their private repo public, or move clone the project to a completely separately named account?
There are some pretty prominent examples of similar "template" approaches for apps in the Rails ecosystem. Namely:
• https://jumpstartrails.com/
• https://bullettrain.co/
So this has been shown to work before :) That said, the guy behind Jumpstart also is running the Go Rails (https://gorails.com/) tutorial series for years now. So he already had quite a following when he launched Jumpstart and I'd bet that did at least not hurt getting it off the ground.
Thanks for the links. These are good examples and are kind of what I was thinking. I like the idea of creating tutorials around the template; they could serve two purposes: Marketing material and helping the user.