How to approach partnering with a hobby hacker
I reached out to a guy who built an open source tool offering to help him out with SEO.
Surprisingly he said yes, but for him it's just a fun hobby side project and not his main focus.
As for me, I'm really interested in either hosting or purchasing his project because it is a great fit for my own site. Any tips from indie hackers on how I can propose hosting his tool on my own site or even buying it without breaking the bank?
He mentioned that he wanted to give it a design update as well as wanting SEO advice, so I'm thinking I'd give him a free SEO audit then suggest I can host the tool on my domain for a monthly fee. Plus I'd give it a design update too and he will still be able to use it in his portfolio and update it via Github.
You might think this sounds a little shady and exploitative but for this guy the tool has no value, whereas for me it is a huge opportunity to grow my own project.
First of all, if it's genuinely FOSS, you can just fork the repo, make the design improvements, and sell access to your hosted version of the software. Nothing stopping you from doing this, as is. (Obviously make sure the license supports this, and make sure there is a license)
If you're looking to take his product off of github and change the license, I'd ask: why?
Tons of successful companies are making big money by offering convenience & hosting layers on top of pure OSS. Check out Cal.com, Ghost, or AirByte.
Hard to tell without what do you want to achieve and what's breaking the bank.
Without breaking bank;
Since it's open sourced, if the licensing fits your requirements, you can fork and make the changes you want, SEO and design.
If he finds them useful, he can merge those changes back to his own repo.
While still not breaking the bank, you can donate or sponsor his project as appreciation.
If it's a huge opportunity for you, you can ask to acquire the whole thing. Further more, you can ask him for contract work for extra development. An encouragement to change his focus.