Ask HN: How do you market Open Source Software?
19 hours ago
We are planning to move our software from closed to open source, and we are looking on how we can market this product to reach our target market.
Btw: Its an alternative to Zendesk, Jira, and linear.
The three products you named each had a sharp, different target. Zendesk for support teams, Jira for engineering orgs, Linear for startup product teams. What's missing from your post is who your target is.
Who is the real target of the thing you're building? Not "we want to be an alternative to these tools," but the people who won't be satisfied by anything except your service. Put the other way around: who exactly are the people using those three tools today and still feeling the friction?
Only once you've pinned that down can you even start discussing marketing strategy, open source vs closed source included.
Why do you think your target market would change? I would have guessed the target market is the same, so marketing should be straight forward: same demographics but differentiating you from the pack and how it matters.
makes sense. (i have not been clear) my question is not about whether the target market changes , it about how after having a open source product how the distribution changes.
Being proprietary or open source should not affect your marketing at all. If transitioning to open source is primarily for marketing purposes, it is likely to backfire.
i am not asking if being open source being itself a marketing a strategy, but how people discover them, and what channels work for getting devs to try them.
Figuring that out is your main work. Creating a community is a full time job.
My approach:
1.Open source + polished README
2.Listed on directories like create.io
3.Added to awesome-rust
4.Did a Show HN post
That's all I've done so far. 60 stars currently.
Are you asking about marketing techniques as in advertising strategies, or are you asking about the underlying business model?
If the former: the README.md is by far the most important artifact, and specifically the first scroll or two. The call to action (installing/trying it out/clicking to your pricing page/whatever) should be clear and upfront and easy.
Having a website that uses popular doc rendering frameworks also help -- people will recognize the look and feel and feel somewhat assured. Tho I suppose a task planning app prolly has docs figured out.
Godspeed, and thanks for sharing your work with the world! We need it, and we appreciate it.
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