SourceHut

SourceHut launched as an alternative to ad/VC-funded forges: pay a few dollars a month, get builds and lists, everything auditable. DeVault published quarterly revenue and expense breakdowns when the finances were still simple enough to fit in a blog post.

The stack thesis: JavaScript-free web UI, email-native code review, and infrastructure you could theoretically run yourself because the code is actually open.

By 2021 SourceHut reported ~$392k total revenue — platform subscriptions plus public consulting contracts that only produce free software. Colocation, domains, and sponsorships were line-item expenses (~$8k colo in 2021).

Quarterly reports gave way to annual ones as complexity grew, but the numbers stayed public: thousands of paid accounts, conversion in the low teens, and a small full-time engineering team paid flat monthly rates.

Later posts describe migrating billing to an EU entity, PXE boot playbooks for dead servers, and ongoing DDoS mitigation — unglamorous forge ops, documented in “what’s cooking” quarters.

SourceHut never became a hyperscaler. It became proof that a dev tool can fund itself honestly with boring infra and published spreadsheets.