You’re right, it’s much more easier with hardware. H5P.org is a better example. 2 years ago, this open source solution for making elearning content didn’t exist. If I’m right, they have released a very nice first version, and after, all the improvement seems to be funded by the customers. No money, no improvement. But as there is a lot of company that want improvement, or the companies improve it themselve, or they didn’t know how to develop, or they want that be done very quickly and they give money to the core team to make the improvements :
Adoption of H5P is increasing at an incredible pace and community engagement is higher than ever. We are seeing great initiative taken by the community both in spreading the word and actively contributing in the development of H5P. This positive reaction has allowed the core team to almost double in size to match the aspirations of the community and bring H5P to the next level. October 2016 status update | H5P
Moodle HQ, Acquia (Drupal) is also good examples that have found a nice economic model with open source. But there is also a lot of case where the economic model with open source has crashed.
But we can also say that it’s not good example, because they sell to companies and not to final user as you do.
I’m absolutely not telling you to change it for free to open source, but i was asking, if communities of user comes with money, and ask you how much it will cost for making the blynk app open source, or create a new app that will be open source, will you be interested ? If you say no, I understand it perfectly, from scrath using this economic model is easier, but when you have already took a lot of risks, worked hard, and that now you can earn money, it’s maybe not a good idea to earn more money, and maybe the way of starting a new project is safer.
An other way is to sell the open source app. Gcompris is following this model : http://gcompris.net/buy-en.html All versions are open source. It’s free for Linux User and user that use f-droid.org, and you have to pay if you use Windows or Apple, or the google playstore.
When I have discovered Blynk 2 days ago, I thought you were following this model, the app is open source, and if we want to add energy that provide other open source components, you have to pay, and i thought that was a very good idea for open source economic model.
who : the finals users, the hardware companies to make their products usable with Blynk.
why : to have new improvement (we can do that if the community will pay X€$) and services. services can be hosted server, help final user to sell the app for their IoT projects, training, consulting, customization, support of new hardware. Putting anounces in the app, could also be a nice economic open source way, making packs with openhardware & training can also be a nice way to earno money with an open source app ?