# Open source can be your distribution channel

- Category: distribution
- Author: Zoltan Szogyenyi (https://indie.md/people/zoltan/)
- Source: https://indie.md/journeys/zoltan-flowbite/
- Canonical URL: https://indie.md/advice/open-source-as-distribution/

Flowbite's free open-source library has over 30 million npm downloads, and those downloads are the marketing. Instead of buying attention, Bergside gives away a genuinely useful core and lets adoption carry the brand into millions of projects. The developers who already build with the free components are the warm audience for the paid pro components and framework integrations. If your product can have a free core that people install and depend on, the open-source version is not lost revenue, it is the cheapest and most durable distribution you will ever own.