One good case study is Maybe Finance. It was a dead project. They open sourced it. And it went viral. And they raised $1.5m within another few weeks. The virality was on GitHub stars and Twitter.
I run a channel about open source that may give you ideas of what other COSS projects are doing: https://youtube.com/elie2222
I heard of Maybe, I invested in them as well. I'm actually looking to do something similar as a COSS, same niche as well but not exactly, more of a budgeting tool like YNAB rather than a full blown investment tracking tool, all open source. Any tips you have for that and for COSS in general?
I didn't know that about Maybe Finance. Was that what prompted you to os inboxzero?
What are the pros and cons? Aren't you afraid that it makes the SaaS offering less enticing, especially to highly technical people (which seems like might be a big chunk of your potential users)?
One good case study is Maybe Finance. It was a dead project. They open sourced it. And it went viral. And they raised $1.5m within another few weeks. The virality was on GitHub stars and Twitter.
I run a channel about open source that may give you ideas of what other COSS projects are doing: https://youtube.com/elie2222
My COSS is called Inbox Zero: https://getinboxzero.com.