Blog

Ideas & Insights

Tutorials, guides, and insights about building with open-source software. Learn how to replace expensive SaaS with powerful alternatives.

15+ articles
Opinionated takes
15 posts

Latest Article

Featured Business & Growth

From 1M to 4M Developers: Supabase's COSS Growth Playbook

How Supabase grew 350% in 12 months to 4.5M developers and $70M ARR through activation optimization, documentation quality, and developer-led growth.

Feb 8, 2026
17 min read
Read article

More Posts

Business & Growth

The New Open Source Stack: What $225B AI Investment Means

How $202B in AI investment created vector databases, inference infrastructure, and observability platforms that replace traditional stacks.

Feb 7, 2026 · 14 min
Read
Ecosystem & Trust

License Wars: How Fauxpen Source Killed Developer Trust

How license changes by Redis, HashiCorp, and Elastic destroyed community trust and what developers need to know before choosing infrastructure.

Feb 5, 2026 · 14 min
Read
Business & Growth

Developer-Led Growth: The $26B Open Source Distribution Win

How developer-led growth achieves 35-50% lower CAC than traditional SaaS while driving $26.4B in COSS investment.

Feb 4, 2026 · 15 min
Read
Business & Growth

Beyond Stars: The Two Metrics That Signal Investment Quality

How combined health and technical scores reveal investment-worthy open source projects better than GitHub stars ever could.

Feb 3, 2026 · 12 min
Read
Business & Growth

Open Source Investment Boom: $26B Validates What We Knew

$26.4B invested in COSS. 25 years of data prove open source outperforms closed source in valuations, funding speed, and exits. But fauxpen source threatens it all.

Feb 2, 2026 · 13 min
Read
Economics & Self-Hosting

Self-Hosting Myths Developers Believe That Aren't True

Debunking five persistent myths about self-hosting that developers repeat without questioning in 2026.

Jan 26, 2026 · 9 min
Read
Economics & Self-Hosting

When Open Source Isn't the Answer: Choosing SaaS Wisely

Honest analysis of when SaaS wins: small team economics, compliance acceleration, time-to-value, and specialized infrastructure with decision framework.

Jan 19, 2026 · 15 min
Read
Ecosystem & Trust

Hidden Gem Open Source Tools You've Never Heard Of Yet

Six production-ready open source tools solving real problems in overlooked niches: ERP, invoicing, localization, analytics, API management, and accounting.

Jan 12, 2026 · 10 min
Read
Enterprise & Scale

Open Source Projects That Actually Scale to Enterprise Use

Documented proof that open source scales: DoD deployments, Netflix data warehouses, 12M users worldwide. Reference architectures you can verify.

Jan 5, 2026 · 11 min
Read
Technical Guides

How to Choose the Right Open Source Alternative for You

A systematic three-factor framework for choosing between open source tools: health scores, technical quality, and use case fit with real CMS examples.

Dec 29, 2025 · 12 min
Read

Join founders buildingwith open source

Opinionated takes, migration guides, cost-saving tips, and insights from the open source ecosystem.

Subscribe on Substack
Join 750+ subscribers