Discussing the challenges of monetising open-source software and how we're handling Avalonia's rapid growth and revenue diversification.

Avalonia UI Blog

Avalonia UI's team shares a transparent look at the financial evolution of their open-source .NET UI framework. After 30% month-over-month growth in 2023, the company successfully diversified revenue away from development services (down from 70.6% to 13% of revenue), with Avalonia XPF (cross-platform WPF) now accounting for 42% of revenue. Support agreements contribute 32.6%, training 10.6%, and GitHub donations a mere 1.7%. The team grew from 2 full-time to 9 full-time developers without external investment, with wages comprising 91.8% of expenses. The post candidly acknowledges that donations alone cannot sustain a popular OSS project and outlines the path toward long-term financial sustainability.

Balancing Growth and Sustainability