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World Congress 2023 β€’ Oct 6, 2023

From Dungeons & Dragons to Fortune 500 – Running a Large Commercial Open-Source project

Elise Bentley

TinyMCE transformed a free open-source editor into a $25M commercial powerhouse. Discover how they simplified pricing and balanced enterprise growth without sacrificing developer trust.

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#1 about 3 min

History and evolution of a rich text editor

Twenty years of development transformed a purely open-source project into a large commercial operation.

#2 about 3 min

Driving sustainable open-source growth through collaboration

Strategic partnerships between product, engineering, and marketing teams uncover customer pain points to shape the roadmap.

#3 about 1 min

Adopting the open-source core model for software technology

Maintaining a free core product serves the developer community while sustaining a commercially viable ecosystem.

#4 about 2 min

Creating premium features that solve specific productivity problems

Developing targeted solutions for prevalent formatting disruptions generates essential reinvestment revenue for the business.

#5 about 2 min

Selecting appropriate open-source licenses for market reach

Evaluating permissive licenses over fully commercial models maximizes product accessibility worldwide.

#6 about 3 min

Building global brand recognition with embedded product marketing

Unobtrusive in-product branding drives website traffic and generates widespread community awareness.

#7 about 3 min

Educating developers on premium features and scaling value

Effective communication of commercial offerings targets professional software teams experiencing specific growth bottlenecks.

#8 about 4 min

Refining licensing boundaries and simplifying software pricing models

Learning from early feature gating mistakes and resolving pricing complexity drastically increases self-service sales.

#9 about 2 min

Achieving global scale and recurring revenue milestones

A sustainable commercial approach successfully scales a globally remote company and expands the user base.

#10 about 2 min

Maintaining velocity with dedicated open-source engineering teams

Separating commercial and open-source engineering efforts ensures consistent community development alongside enterprise innovation.

Matching moments

2:00 min

Balancing open source access with enterprise monetization

Phil Nash Β· Coffee With Developers

2:12 min

Navigating commercial licensing for dedicated open-source development tools

Chris Heilmann +3 Β· LIVE

3:29 min

Exploring business models for open source software projects

Stormy Peters Β· World Congress 2023

1:48 min

Maintaining an open-source core amidst proprietary editor forks

Julia Kasper Β· Coffee With Developers

1:52 min

Balancing project funding and growth with dual licensing models

Kevin Kevin +1 Β· World Congress 2025

58 sec

Building viable economic models for open source operations

CΓ©dric GΓ©gout CΓ©dric GΓ©gout +4 Β· World Congress 2026 Europe

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Upcoming sessions on this topic

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September 25, 2026 Β· 13:30–14:00

Stage 3

Lessons from 20 Years of Bootstrapping an Open Source Business to $50M+

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Percona, Founder

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September 25, 2026 Β· 12:55–13:25

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Co-Founder & CEO

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Open session

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September 25, 2026 Β· 13:30–14:00

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VP Engineering Platform and Security at Scrut.io

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TYPO3 CMS Project Lead at TYPO3

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September 24, 2026 Β· 12:15–12:45

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AI vs. AI: Defending the open source supply chain with agentic workflows

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Senior Principal DevRel Engineer at Chainguard

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