Closing Up: Why I’m making some of my projects closed-source

I have archived my open-source OnboardingKit repository and replaced it with a new, closed-source one with a commercial license. It’s the first of many projects to make this move. Let me explain why.

Background

I’ve been building open-source projects for many years. I now maintain more than 20, where some are very small and others are more complex.

I’ve always enjoyed this. Open source has given me a lot, from the people I’ve met to opportunities it has led to, and I’ve learned more from sharing my code than I ever would otherwise.

What changed

It has however become harder and harder to motivate pouring hours into so many open projects.

One factor is that people seem to care less in general. Fewer people open issues, send pull requests or give feedback, and I find myself maintaining many of these projects in a vacuum.

The other part is AI. Everything I put on GitHub, with docs, tests and years of design decisions, ends up as training data for models that will help others build the same thing, without me. I’m not naive about this when publishing something under a permissive license, but it feels different now. It’s one thing to share your work with other developers, and another to hand it over to a machine.

I could keep going and accept this as the price of open source. But I realized that I no longer want to spend my evenings on 20+ projects under these conditions.

What I’m doing instead

Instead, I’m going to convert some of my projects to closed-source projects, with a free tier as and a cheap paid plan. They will published by my company Kankoda, and OnboardingKit is the first one.

These projects will require a license, powered by my LicenseKit engine. You can get either go with a free or a paid license, where the paid unlocks more features.

What happens to the old repository

The old, open-source versions of these projects will be archived and remain as public archives. They will still be MIT licensed, so nothing is taken away from anyone who is using it, but they will however no longer be updated. If you depend on the old version, you can keep doing that, or fork it.

What I expect

I don’t expect this to go anywhere. Few will buy a license, and some will be annoyed that something that used to be free now isn’t. That’s fair. But it will at least let me keep my work off the hands of AI, and give me a reason to keep improving it. I expect all these projects to become better.

Not everything

I’m not abandoning open source. Not all projects will be converted, and I will continue to share new things when it makes sense, since I still love it. I will decide on a project by project basis, depending on how much time it requires and how much it gives back.

Conclusion

This was not an easy decision, and I can’t say that I’m happy about the reasons for it. But it’s better than letting projects that I care about slowly wither, or keep pouring time into something that will just drain the joy out of the work.

If you used the old OnboardingKit, thank you for the stars, the feedback and for using it. I hope you’ll give the new version a try.

You can find all my open-source projects here, and all closed-source ones at the Kankoda website.

Thank you!