The Open Source Maintenance Fee adds one more very important facet beyond GitHub Sponsors and standardized text: the EULA.
To adopt the OSMF, you add the EULA to your project’s releases. The EULA states that anyone generating revenue from the released output of the project (such as your GitHub release .zip files) must pay the Open Source Maintenance Fee (typically via GitHub Sponsors). In layman’s terms: companies that use the project (but don’t build from source) pay a small fee to keep the project maintained.
My project adopted it in our latest release. We went from 0 sponsors to 90 sponsors in 6 months. And more sponsors show up every month as companies upgrade.
Newsletter could be community supported (maybe gathering ideas for each newsletter in this forum / top posts from each month) before sending it out, with links to donations page.
Video/Walkthroughs: would benefit the community as a whole, would definitely be useful for those wanting to develop on/for SB.
Hosted Silverbullet would help, but would be interested in seeing the revenue from Obsidian/Roam from having doing this. But also think self-hosting is a feature which distinguishes SB, so this one would be bit tricky.
One more idea (more of a long term):
Developing proprietary tools on SB and sell to enterprise! Don’t know how this would look but would be interesting to explore.
If your project is more “direct to consumer”, then the OSMF may not be a good fit. It’s a new idea, so I try to help clarify its goals as people discuss it.
Best of luck on your sustainability exploration. And know that you are not alone. Many maintainers are trying to find their way forward.
Maybe you could reach out to some YouTubers who make videos deploying several Free/OpenSource/SelfHosted application in docker/proxmox/cloud etc. and let them make videos about silverbullet, on how to deploy them in different scenerios, and a quick intro on how to use it.
I learned a lot from these guys and their content is awesome. Of course I know only the “consumer” part of the coin and don’t know if these Youtuber ask money from devs in exchange for their video, but I think it’s worth a try to get silverbullet more visibility.
Here are some YouTubers/Influencers I follow, and you might also know if you are into SelfHosting Apps. Maybe you can get in contact with them for a shoutout about silverbullet in their videos:
I’ve seen Immich mentioned, but not really their “business model.” The software is paid, but you can still use it without a license, and it seems to work well for them. I think that’s a great approach—I wouldn’t mind paying for such a solid tool, though they have a lot more users.
I personally really dislike the partially open source model, for the reasons you mentioned. Docmost went this route—it’s great for enterprises, but for individual users it doesn’t work well in my view. If you want to make it paid software, just make the whole thing paid (and keep it open source?),
Or limit it to really specific features, like uploading notes to a hosting service, converting them to Hugo-compatible markdown, and making them available as a static site though this feels more like a hosting add-on than locking away a core feature.
Videos are a cool idea—maybe make them free after some time , this could allow to make a video every 3 to 6 months, make them paid for (half) a year as a way to support you, and later upload them on youtube
You could also encourage donations with a small popup after updates, or a paragraph in the default index.md. KDE does a yearly “help us” reminder, and people seem totally willing to give if you let them know it matters.
I probably wouldn’t use a proprietary version of SB, i would just keep using the current one, it would be sad tbh
It is still a great software though, thank for giving it away for free !
, this could allow to make a video every 3 to 6 months, make them paid for (half) a year as a way to support you, and later upload them on youtube