Thursday
Room 3
15:00 - 16:00
(UTC±00)
Talk (60 min)
Stars Don’t Pay the Bills: Turning Open Source Into a Business
GitHub stars look good on your profile — but they don’t pay the bills. If you’ve ever thought about turning your open source project into something more — maybe even a business — this talk is for you.
I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve learned a lot by turning my side project into a sustainable, bootstrapped open source business doing over £10K MRR — and eventually, I took the leap to leave my full-time job to focus on it completely.
In this talk, I’ll share lessons I’ve learned so far:
- Growing and engaging a community around your project
- What actually works (and doesn’t) when pricing open source
- The realities of open core models and building in public
- Why plugin-based systems and extensibility create long-term value
- How to talk to users without getting misled (using the Mom Test)
- Why focusing on what really matters beats chasing every request
- Taking the leap to go full-time — and how to know when the timing is right
- The trade-offs and hard truths no one tells you about monetizing OSS
You’ll walk away with a candid, practical playbook for making open source sustainable — whether your goal is side income, a self-funded business, or simply building a project that lasts.
David Boyne
David is the Founder of EventCatalog.dev, a tool that simplifies event-driven architectures for developers by providing an intuitive interface to document and visualize event-driven systems. With a passion for open-source development, David has made significant contributions to the tech community, establishing himself as a prolific open-source contributor. His work is widely recognized for its impact on improving the accessibility and efficiency of event-driven applications.
Before founding EventCatalog.dev, David was a Developer Advocate at AWS, where he focused on serverless technologies and event-driven architectures. During his time at AWS, he authored the book EDA Visuals, which has become an essential resource for developers working with event-driven architectures. David is also a renowned international speaker, having presented at more than 20 conferences around the globe including AWS reInvent, GOTO Conferences, and EDA Day, among others.
Outside of his professional endeavors, David enjoys playing guitar, singing and building communities.