AKA: Acquisition
Selling the whole or parts of the project to an interested party (e.g., big company that is using it). Can become complicated if many maintainers and contributors have rights to part of the OSS. Might require an "earn-out" period where the old owners transfer knowledge to the new owner (e.g., as an always available contact person or via pair-programming sessions).
Requires:
- Clarification of copyright and revenue distribution with all involved maintainers and contributors
- Negotiation of a selling price
- Setup of a sales contract (potentially between two countries / jurisdictions)
- Time to conduct the knowledge transfer
Variants & Options:
- Partial sale: Selling a part of the project (e.g., with less external contributions or a special feature set (esp. plugins, helping tools, etc.))
- Full sale: Selling the whole project
- Indiemaker (For projects with or without revenue)
- SideProjectors (For projects with or without revenue)
- GithubStore (For buying and selling repositories on Github)
| Characteristics | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Effort to set-up | Weeks | Contract setup; Finding a buyer might take long. |
| Effort to maintain | N/A | One-time sale; Multiple sales for parts possible |
| Cost to set-up | Low | Might get higher if bullet-proof contracts are needed |
| Cost to maintain | None | |
| One-time Income | Medium | One-time sale with a price that heavily depends on OSS |
| Recurring Income | Low | Might be possible if parts can easily be developed & sold |
| Income Predictability | None | Unstable even if parts are sold over time |
| Full income Threshold | N/A | Valuation very volatile (and depends on revenue distribution) |
| Recipient | I or C | |
| Additional Work | Low | Maybe extra work to transfer knowledge to buyer |
| Visibility | None | Probably buyer must approach maintainers |
| Necessity to pay | Low | Might be neccessary to block competition |
| Entry Threshold | High | Clarification of copyrights; Knowledge of Tech, etc. |
| Countervalue | Rights | Right to the OSS or a part thereof |
| Scalability | None | One-time sale; Multiple sales for parts possible |
| Effort for marketing | High | Finding buyers is difficult but if many users exist might be easier |
| Competitors | None | No other party could sell the project - but forking might be a problem |
| Software types | All |
NOTE: Due to the nature of open-source a company could fork and build it's own version without paying the old maintainers. While the license for the old code would stay, the changes and extentions made by the company would become closed-source.