Open Source has my heart… and my brain
I know, I know — Open Source again. Why do we always talk about it? Simply because we care.
When I tell people I work on an Open Source project, the responses reveal just how misleading the term has become.
Some assume it's a hobby — nights and weekends squeezed around a "real job". Others think it's a startup game — giving away software to build adoption before changing to a paid model or chasing VC funding. A few imagine it's volunteer work, driven purely by idealism without any business foundation. The term "Open Source" has become so broad that it's lost clear meaning.
The reality is more nuanced. Open Source isn't one thing — it's a spectrum of approaches, each with different motivations, governance models, and business strategies. At one end, you have purely community-driven projects sustained by distributed volunteers. At the other, you have venture-backed companies using Open Source licenses as temporary marketing tools, building toward an eventual licensing change or acquisition.
Understanding the spectrum
The confusion makes sense. "Open Source" has become an umbrella term covering wildly different approaches:
- Community-driven projects operate through distributed collaboration. Contributors work without corporate sponsors, decisions emerge through consensus, and governance is collective. Think Linux, or the many libraries and tools maintained by dedicated volunteers.
- VC-backed Open Source startups use permissive licenses to accelerate adoption. The goal is growth — build a user base, attract funding, then monetize through licensing changes, enterprise features, or acquisition. Some do this transparently; others present it as pure altruism until the business model shift arrives.
- Corporate-sponsored projects come from companies like Google or Microsoft, where Open Source serves strategic goals — establishing standards, reducing competitor influence, or benefiting from community contributions while maintaining control.
- Service-based Open Source companies build businesses on top of genuinely open software. The code stays free and open; revenue comes from implementation, support, training, and professional services. This is where Sulu sits.
We're transparent about our position. There's a company behind Sulu with full-time employees, a business plan, and paying customers. We make architectural decisions and set the roadmap. We're not pretending to be a community-governed project like Linux or a purely volunteer effort.
But we're also not using Open Source as a temporary tactic. We're not building adoption to justify a VC pitch. We're not planning a licensing change once we hit growth targets. The MIT license stays. This isn't our marketing strategy — it's our product philosophy.
As we detailed in our Open Source commitment, we've watched major platforms abandon their licenses and introduce revenue thresholds. That's not our path. The MIT license isn't going anywhere.
Community collaboration: Central, not peripheral
While we maintain direction over the project, we're not operating in isolation. We listen to our community and work together on Sulu's evolution. This isn't about collecting feedback and disappearing into a development bunker — it's ongoing dialogue that shapes what we build and how we build it.
Some of our best features and most important bug fixes come from community members who needed something specific and contributed it back. We're constantly looking for ways to improve this collaboration, to make it easier for agencies, developers, and organizations using Sulu to participate in its development.
The balance we're striking: we provide professional stewardship and long-term vision, while remaining genuinely open to community input and contribution. It's a working model, and we're committed to making it work better.
Our business model
So how does this work? How do you build a business around genuinely Open Source software?
I'll be honest: it's not easy. Currently, products like our partner program with agencies, along with training and consulting, make up around 20% of our revenue. The larger portion — roughly 80% — comes from development services, where we build custom solutions for clients using Sulu.
This service-heavy model has its challenges. We're actively working on shifting that balance toward products, and you'll see new offerings from us that we hope will create a more sustainable mix between product and service revenue.
Our partner program
Our partner program works with agencies that share our values. Partners get priority support, direct access to the Sulu core team, and technical consulting to help them deliver better results for their clients. They can review projects with our experts and receive architecture guidance that deepens their Sulu expertise.
Partners also have a voice in Sulu's future — their feature requests take priority, they get exclusive insights into our product roadmap, and they participate in annual feedback meetings that shape our development direction. We provide marketing support, agency listings on sulu.io, and joint pitching opportunities where I present alongside partner agencies to potential clients.
This creates a genuine win-win: agencies can take on more ambitious projects with confidence, while we generate revenue from the expertise that helps our ecosystem thrive.
The key principle
Our business model is built on top of Open Source. We don't give away a "community edition" while reserving essential features for a paid tier. We don't offer Open Source as a trial version of what we really want you to buy. Sulu is fully functional and complete as an Open Source CMS. Our business comes from helping organizations implement it successfully and from building the ecosystem around it.
This approach means we're playing a longer game than VC-backed competitors who can burn through funding to grab market share. We need to be profitable, sustainable, and smart about how we invest in development. That's the trade-off for genuine Open Source: slower growth, perhaps, but without the pressure to eventually monetize our users through licensing pivots.
Balancing business and Open Source
Here's the real work: the constant balancing act between running a sustainable business and investing in truly open software.
Every feature we build, every bug we fix, every documentation page we write — we're making decisions about how to allocate resources between immediate client needs and long-term community value. We're figuring out how to fund development of features that won't directly generate revenue but make the platform better for everyone.
This isn't romantic. It's strategic, sometimes difficult, and always intentional. We have a talented and committed team whose work needs to serve both our paying clients and the broader Sulu community. That tension is real, and managing it requires constant attention.
The upcoming products we're developing are part of that equation. They're our attempt to create revenue streams that can fund more core development, support better tooling, and allow us to invest in features that benefit everyone.
What Open Source means to us
Strip away the marketing speak, and here's what Open Source means for Sulu:
- Transparency in development. Our code is public. Our decisions are visible. You can see what we're building and why.
- Freedom from lock-in. You can use Sulu, modify it, and deploy it without permission or licensing negotiations. That's not a trial period — it's permanent.
- Community contribution. While we drive the roadmap, we welcome and integrate contributions. We're working to make this collaboration even stronger.
- Long-term thinking. We're not optimising for a quick exit. We're building a business that can sustain Open Source development for the long haul.
Is this the same as a fully community-governed project? No. Is it more honest than companies using Open Source as a growth hack? Absolutely.
Moving forward
The Open Source landscape is evolving. The pure idealism of the early days is colliding with economic reality. Companies are experimenting with different models — some working, some are failing, a few changing the rules midstream and burning community trust in the process.
We're charting our own path: professional, sustainable, and genuinely open. Not because it's the easiest model, but because we believe it's the right one for building software that serves our users over the long term.
When someone asks what I do, I'm going to keep saying I work on an Open Source project. Because I do. It just happens to also be my full-time job, backed by a business model that makes that sustainable.
