While I understand the sentiment for software that’s set in stone like a specific version of Photoshop released 20 years ago or the average finished single-player game today, I think Vikunja, like most projects that are still under development, is not quite like that. For some things, subscriptions just make more sense than one-time payments.
Subscriptions have the potential of making the price more fair for different users.[1] I don’t think I can know how much a piece of software is worth to me the first time I look at it, as I have no idea for how long I will use it, but I have some idea how much having it for a month would be worth. Then, if I give up on it after just one month, I didn’t waste too much money, and if I use it for a decade, I paid a sum that I’d never agree to as a one-time payment. This incentivizes developers to make something that’s actually good rather than just marketable.
I’m not defending subscriptions as the better business model, but if I’m to support the continuous development of Vikunja because I use it, I’d rather pay a small amount every month while using it than guessing how much the fair “lifetime” price would be.
Regarding marketing, I think Vikunja is an attractive proposition as long as it focuses on being easy to self-host, secure, and reliable. A project this small will not win feature table wars against teams with dozens of developers, and I don’t think it should try to.
Of course, that’s not why so much commercial software today is subscription-based, but that doesn’t invalidate the point in general. ↩︎
I think one company to look at is Zulip - how did they make it without going open core?
Personally I am not a fan of open core cause it can be such a slippery slope, whitelabeling licenses seem one good option but for that to work you need some curious license restrictions.
But if it is the best we can do in the end, I will nonetheless support Vikunja.
I do believe with the right value proposition it can be attractive to companies, maybe starting with SMEs who are not already locked in on some ecosystem, with a simple SaaS like we already have but maybe with SLAs and stuff then.
Zulip is not hiding features and still seems to make good money with their hosting.
I’ll just chuck my 2 cents in here too, I agree that open core is a very slippery slope. I’m here purely because Leantime was naggy and annoying, and I’m not going to go to the trouble of hosting a solution that pesters me with ads for the premium features. I can absolutely see how it begins with the best of intentions, but in my experience, it’s very rare it ends well. Once you start paywalling features that are useful to run a business (especially if you choose to do the Leantime thing of nickel-and-diming every feature on a subscription basis), you now have to address the elephant in the room: why am I not just using Jira (or insert your own paid offering here)? I really love this project and I don’t mean to belittle it (especially since it does some things well that Jira does not), but I’ll just be blunt - that’s not a comparison you want at this stage in the project.
I do recognize the pain though of building this as a business while still trying to stay true to the open source foundations. Hosting is a good option, as is good AI integration (Atlassian’s is… not good, even by the standards of the open source community). I don’t have the ultimate answer for open source profitability (if I did, I’d be rich) but I worry that this project will struggle to stand out in a space that’s highly populated with business-grade paid solutions and sparsely populated with free or non-subscription ones.
To be honest, I don’t know if it will be the best It’s a thing I’ve seen working for others and something that I’m ready to test. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll try something else.
The way I plan it is without mentions of it in the UI (you’d need to search for the things on the website), I don’t want it to degrade the UX. I hate ads.
I believe there are plenty of ways to compete without targeting the same SMEs who are the target for Jira.
But yeah, that’s not something Vikunja is positioned to compete with.
It’s a thing I’ve seen working for others and something that I’m ready to test. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll try something else.