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Ask HN: How do you market Open Source Software?

5 points by Daniel-Pan 13d 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.

bbor 13d ago
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.
mandarinclips 13d ago
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.
andsoitis 13d ago
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.
- Daniel-Pan 13d ago
  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.
ThrowawayR2 13d ago
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.
- Daniel-Pan 13d ago
  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.
  - brazukadev 12d ago
    Figuring that out is your main work. Creating a community is a full time job.
FannyJoeStyles 13d ago
[dead]
Swankivo 13d ago
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.
- Daniel-Pan 10d ago
  Out target market include people who have repos in GitHub (opensource), and they connect with their community using Discord, Forum and emails. The problem we identified is that when managing a repo, customer queries raised in GitHub, or any other platform, to see if that has been resolved before or not, is manual. We are automating this process. We are not sure in which platform our target market exist but we can categorize from open source teams or devs in software and gaming.
Arya_xiaofan 13d ago
[dead]
gus_massa 12d ago
Open core or full open source? MIT or AGPL? How do you expect to get money?
Skiffssh 10d ago
i havent marketed my project skiff on hacker news yet and still have 155 stars on github what i did was i publish my project on selfh.st and was lucky enough to get place in the newsletter which brought like around thousand of views on my repo. though now i am thinking of making a proper post on hacker news

5 points by Daniel-Pan 13d 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.

bbor 13d ago

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.

mandarinclips 13d ago

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.

andsoitis 13d ago

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.

Daniel-Pan 13d ago
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.

ThrowawayR2 13d ago

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.

Daniel-Pan 13d ago
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.
- brazukadev 12d ago
  Figuring that out is your main work. Creating a community is a full time job.

FannyJoeStyles 13d ago

[dead]

Swankivo 13d ago

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.

Daniel-Pan 10d ago
Out target market include people who have repos in GitHub (opensource), and they connect with their community using Discord, Forum and emails. The problem we identified is that when managing a repo, customer queries raised in GitHub, or any other platform, to see if that has been resolved before or not, is manual. We are automating this process. We are not sure in which platform our target market exist but we can categorize from open source teams or devs in software and gaming.

Arya_xiaofan 13d ago

[dead]

gus_massa 12d ago

Open core or full open source? MIT or AGPL? How do you expect to get money?

Skiffssh 10d ago

i havent marketed my project skiff on hacker news yet and still have 155 stars on github what i did was i publish my project on selfh.st and was lucky enough to get place in the newsletter which brought like around thousand of views on my repo. though now i am thinking of making a proper post on hacker news