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Speaking as someone who built an analytics business while still maintaining an open source version of the code, I can confirm that it's hard. Sometimes it starts off as one small patch that only makes sense for the hosted service, but you can't push to the OS branch until the code is refactored to protect secrets.

I cannot give you any tips on managing your time between the two, but you may want to consider raising your prices. Back in 2011, we ran our basic account at $50/mo, Business at $150/mo and Enterprise at $CallMe/mo. We could probably have upped that after a year with all the new features we'd put in, but we were acquired before the 2y mark and dropped the first 2 plans.

We still maintain the open source version of the code, but neither of the original founders work on it (for me it's gone back to being a hobby because there are now people paid full time to work on it). We still get questions about the lag in updates. We typically do quarterly bulk pushes to the open source version now.



Thanks for sharing your story. It is hard and we have to fight to not resent OSS because of 0.001% of the OS community. Open-source software has contributed significantly to our lives, and we love it, so we're going to be pursuing OS Version 2 regardless of a few angry people.


Armchair CEO here but charge a fair rate and if that means double do it. People will respect it and pay it if the product or service is helping them make money and I’d rather pay a higher amount and know I’m helping fund a tool that I use to help me be productive than get something cheap.




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