Our journey began with SimpleBLE, a project that revealed the challenges of sustaining open source software, inspiring us to build a better way forward.
Challenges of Open Source Sustainability
In early 2020, I needed a reliable Bluetooth Low Energy library for my job, but existing options were outdated, abandoned, or hard to use. Out of frustration, I started building SimpleBLE under an MIT license, the same license everyone was using, but I didn't give much thought to it. For four years, I put in thousands of hours to improve the library, and it grew naturally as users valued its reliability and shared helpful feedback. In late 2023, my priorities shifted after a job change, and SimpleBLE began to lag, with updates slowing as I focused elsewhere. As companies demanded new features and fixes, we tried sponsorships to keep the project funded. Despite some interest, they raised little money, since the MIT license let companies use fixes for free. This frustration planted the idea that commercialization might be the answer, but we hesitated, unsure about the risks and challenges involved.
High Costs of Commercializing Open Source
When exploring how to commercialize SimpleBLE, we became aware of the obstacles and realized how hard it would be to commit to such an endeavor, given the uncertain payback at the end. Hiring a lawyer to draft a commercial license would have cost more than the expected sales for the first year, with no guarantee that SimpleBLE would earn enough to justify the cost. Incorporation meant dealing with paperwork, compliance requirements and fixed costs that added up quickly. Taxes were confusing and easy to get wrong, especially when every state in the US has different rules and regulations. Selling to larger companies had the additional overhead of vendor forms and certificates. Marketing required testing multiple strategies to learn what worked, often through costly mistakes. The hurdles just didn't stop coming.
No company offered a complete approach that would lower the barriers to commercialize small projects. Some companies provided sponsorship platforms or subscription tools, but these only solved small parts of the problem. The barriers were not only about money but also about legal, administrative, and operational tasks, and I realized most developers would be unprepared or unwilling to handle them.
Building the Machinery
With SimpleBLE, we faced the same hurdles as countless developers: a great project at risk of fading because the open source model offered no clear path to sustainability. So we set out to solve it ourselves, the same way I set out to build the BLE library I needed but didn't exist. By going commercial, we kept the project alive through its first year and added over 1,000 hours of work to improve it, far more than the open source model could then support. We offered free licenses to hobbyists and startups, ensuring the project remained accessible to the community.
The experience showed that commercialization could address the economic flaws in open source, but only if the process was made easier and less risky. We created a flexible legal framework that adapts to different business models and validated it with lawyers at a low cost. We found that a shared business structure can cover fixed costs like incorporation, contracts and compliance, so the people writing the code can focus on writing code. We formed partnerships for sales, marketing, and tools that a single small project could not have reached alone. All of that machinery now exists, and it's what lets us stand behind the software we maintain.
Open Source People Can Depend On
For us, open source has always been about the open part: being able to look at the code, understand how it works and make sure it isn't doing anything shady under the hood. It was never about everything being free, as keeping a project healthy throughout the years takes a lot of work. To avoid a tragedy of the commons, it's important for those who build products on top of open source to send some of the captured value back to the projects that made it possible. That money keeps those projects going for everyone else, and hobbyists and researchers keep using it for free.
That balance is what we're after. Companies get software that someone is actually taking care of, and the projects get steady, funded work instead of whatever time is left over on weekends. We spend a lot of time using what we build, chasing down edge cases and making the experience as good as we can, long after the launch post.
If that sounds like something you'd like to talk about, we'd love to hear from you.