Anyone building developer tools?

Hey IndieHackers,

So I'm building Starboard, an open source literate notebook system (a fancy way of saying it's a tool in which you can mix text and code). Useful for interactive articles, tutorials or prototypes.

These kinds of things need to be open source to gain any traction as far as I can tell, and the monetization comes from building a service around it or sponsorships. I feel like I'm building something similar to Github or Gitlab, is it even possible to bootstrap that? At some point I will need some form of income of course. Is anyone in a similar boat?

I posted my project to hackernews today, so far it's just sliding down the Show HN: New page without making it onto the actual Show HN page.. I had a similar experience the last time despite getting more upvotes this time. I don't quite understand how a post with 3 upvotes can be above mine with around 12, I suppose that upvotes are not equal at all! The HN thread is here, it's easy to lose motivation like this :(