Comment by freedomben
8 hours ago
Really glad to see someone stepping up to fill this void! I've debated doing this myself many times but it's low on my list of priorities.
Please don't interpret these frank questions as criticism or mistrust up front, but we've been burned a few times with tools like this start open source and then realize there might be some money out there and go proprietary, usually with a rug pull. I don't mind offering paid hosting at all (in fact I think it makes sense to offer that) so long as the code all remains open source. The "open core" model may even be ok so long as it's truly just "enterprise" feature that are gated, though that's a hard line to tread.
What are your monetization plans? Are you committed to long-term being actually open source?
Personally, I would suggest licensing this as AGPL to ensure that if anyone does take it and try to stand up a paid/proprietary service based on your work, the license will at least force them to open their code. It's not perfect. but with MIT you have zero defense against that. It would also give people like me some peace of mind.
It should be monetized to support the long term commitment
I have no problem with monetization. I do have a problem with rug-pulling, especially if it's a tool I'm adopting into my workflow. I ask about monetization strategy because it can be an indicator. If the answer is, "never thought about it" then rug pull is a strong possibility. If the answer is, "planning to offer paid hosting" then that can be a positive sign.
Very good points. Including the AGPL, that is definitely a better license for this type of project. I am just used to starting with MIT when I start a new open source project, but you have a point.
About monetization, that is definitely very important. For now, and not sure how long, could be days or weeks, I am offering api-keys at no charge, because I want the feedback of real users. But obviously that is not sustainable in the long term, servers cost money and monetization also help keep the project alive.
At a second stage, I am planning to offer monthly or yearly plans with different limitations or unlimited also. But I am also planning on offering pay per use with short lives api-keys targeting agentic workflows, for example or people that dont really want to pay a monthly fee, but instead just cents for a short-lived tunnel.
For the monthly plans, I am planning to keep as low cost as possible, just enough to maintain the infrastructure and development + some overhead.