git:20261008.a85674e to git:20261015.f440cbb

12 added, 58 removed. Audit A to A.

---

name: oss-strategy

- description: Use when deciding open source strategy — business model, COSS, open core, commercialization, or growth. Triggers on "open source strategy", "open source to paid", "open source business model", "OSS 策略", "DevHunt", "开源策略", "开源商业模式".

+ description: Evaluate an open-source business and community strategy. Triggers on "open source strategy", "OSS 策略".

---

# Open Source Strategy

- Guide open source as a commercialization path: build community and trust first, monetize

- later. Many products use open source for early growth (Supabase, Plausible, Cal.com, Llama, Qwen,

- Dify) and later commercialize via managed services or open core.

- **Core insight:** Brand is the moat when code is commoditized. Developers won't pay directly;

- they become your marketing force through word-of-mouth, content, and recommendations.

## When to use

- - User wants open source strategy, OSS commercialization, or open core / COSS business model.

- - Deciding between open core, managed service, or support-first monetization.

- - Planning open source growth: community building, stars strategy, DevHunt launch.

- - User says "open source strategy", "open source to paid", "open source business model", "OSS 策略", "DevHunt", "开源策略", or "开源商业模式".

+ - Evaluate an open-source business and community strategy.

- **Not for:** GitHub README/topics/About beautification — that's `oss-polish`.

+ **Not for:** oss-polish for repository presentation.

## Steps

- 1. **Choose the business model.** Match the model to the product and audience:

- | Model | Description | Examples |

- |-------|-------------|----------|

- | **Open Core** | Core free; enterprise features (SSO, audit, multi-tenancy) paid | GitLab, Elastic, Grafana |

- | **Managed Services (SaaS)** | Self-host free; cloud/hosted paid | MongoDB Atlas, Confluent, Dify |

- | **Support-First** | Free software; enterprise support subscriptions | Red Hat |

- | **Free + Paid Convenience** | 70–80% revenue from cloud; self-host free | Most COSS companies |

- Enterprise users buy risk mitigation — SLAs, indemnification, security patches, support —

- not just code.

- For general pricing models, value-based pricing, GTM motions, and the indie-developer

- revenue ladder beyond OSS — load `references/commercialization-models.md`.

- 2. **Pick the license.** This determines who can fork and whether cloud giants can exploit

- your work without contributing:

- | License | Use | Trade-off |

- |---------|-----|-----------|

- | **MIT, Apache 2.0** | Permissive; max adoption | Cloud giants can fork without contributing |

- | **AGPL** | Prevent cloud fork without contribution | May reduce adoption |

- | **BSL/SSPL** | Source-available; commercial restrictions | Elastic, HashiCorp, Redis Labs shifted to this |

+ 1. Identify users, buyer, maintenance capacity and commercialization constraints.

- 3. **Plan community and trust.** Open source distribution runs on trust, not ad spend:

- - **Build in public** — share progress, metrics, failures; attracts early adopters.

- - **CONTRIBUTING.md** — clear contribution path; lowers friction for outside PRs.

- - **Transparency** — published roadmap and changelog; community involvement in planning.

- - **Preserve goodwill** — communicate commercialization early; keep investing in the OSS core.

+ 2. Compare suitable business models against current primary evidence; avoid universal revenue ratios or launch-time claims.

- Community benefits: organic word-of-mouth, user-generated content (SEO), free QA via bug

- reports, contribution activity signals project health.

+ 3. Distinguish open-source licenses from source-available restrictions; verify obligations and leave adoption to the user.

- 4. **Plan the growth launch.** Stars without strategy are vanity metrics. Coordinate a

- multi-channel launch (HN, Reddit, Dev.to); Tuesday–Wednesday US Pacific morning often

- outperforms. A quality README and clear value proposition matter more than channel volume.

- For DevHunt (developer tools directory): prepare product info (name, tagline, description,

- category, GitHub URL); it's naturally aligned with open source projects.

+ 4. Propose a bounded distribution experiment with success and stop criteria, costs and uncertainties.

- **Output:** `docs/research/strategy.md` — the commercialization decision: business model, license,

- community plan, and growth-launch channel plan. A PRD input when commercialization shapes product scope.

- Closes with a 确认 block: the human marks each strategic decision 采纳/修正/驳回 with rationale

- before it feeds the PRD. Format: `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/human-audit.md`.

+ **Output:** Suggested paths, subject to [human audit](../../../references/human-audit.md): `docs/research/strategy.md` when durable strategy is requested.

## Verify

- - A business model is chosen and justified against the product and audience.

- - A license is selected with its trade-offs acknowledged.

- - A community plan exists (contributing guide, transparency, build-in-public cadence).

- - The growth launch has a concrete channel plan, not just "post on GitHub."

+ - Recommendation matches real resources; license and commercial claims are sourced and adoption is explicit.

## References

- - [${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/engineering-principles.md](${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/engineering-principles.md) — discipline shared by every skill.

- - [${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/product-principles.md](${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/product-principles.md) — product discipline (opportunity = demand × giant blind spot ÷ difficulty, the real competitor is the current workaround).

- - [${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/human-audit.md](${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/human-audit.md) — audit-block baseline: AUD vs 确认 blocks, status lifecycle, readability bar.

+ - [engineering-principles.md](../../../references/engineering-principles.md) — shared decision boundaries, scope and verification.

+ - [product-principles.md](../../../references/product-principles.md) — product discipline (opportunity = demand × giant blind spot ÷ difficulty, the real competitor is the current workaround).

+ - [human-audit.md](../../../references/human-audit.md) — document consent, readability and human review.

- [references/commercialization-models.md](references/commercialization-models.md) — general pricing (subscription/freemium/usage/per-seat), value-based pricing, AI-product pricing trap, GTM motions (PLG/sales-led/product-led sales), indie-developer revenue ladder.

- GitHub README/Topics/About beautification: `08-ship/oss-polish`.