I'm curious if anyone is aware of pure CLI tools that that are monetised, either by premium support or by offering a free and paid version. Majority I've seen are extensions of some sort of SaaS or desktop product (IDEs, testing, etc.)
Not much. I've encountered a handful of esoteric file conversion tools, though I couldn't say whether any of those are still for sale/available now that you can hide the secret sauce behind a web front end.<p>It doesn't seem impossible in principle, but anything viable has to be better than any open source tools that might be out there but also able to command an audience with enough money and inclination to pay for it despite whatever level of license infringement takes place. It sounds like quite a narrow scope!
I would have said k9s (free) and k9s alpha (pay for additional features), but it looks like the k9s alpha site is not up/working at the moment. k9s itself still gets regular updates, but I’m not sure what the status of k9s alpha is anymore. I had assumed it was still available, but I never tracked it too closely.<p><a href="https://github.com/derailed/k9s">https://github.com/derailed/k9s</a><p><a href="https://k9scli.io/" rel="nofollow">https://k9scli.io/</a>
Sure. My company sells Conveyor, a CLI build tool for deploying desktop apps.<p><a href="https://hydraulic.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://hydraulic.dev/</a><p>(yes the domain name is silly, rebranding is on the todo list but customers come first).<p>It has plenty of customers paying a $45/month subscription, some of which are big name companies that unfortunately don't like to have their logo put on the web page. But it's a CLI tool, and it's monetized. What do you want to know?
Yes, this is a possible business model for developer tools. My declarative schema management product Skeema is primarily a CLI tool, available in both FOSS [1] and paid editions, with the latter adding extra functionality and optional premium support [2].<p>In my space, some larger competitors are more focused on SaaS/cloud offerings. But that can be a mixed bag for security-sensitive customers who prefer to self-host, as well as for folks who want to integrate a tool into an automation/CI/CD pipeline. CLI tools are more compelling in those situations.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/skeema/skeema/">https://github.com/skeema/skeema/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.skeema.io/download/" rel="nofollow">https://www.skeema.io/download/</a>
PHPStan, a static analysis tool for PHP, has a Pro version: <a href="https://phpstan.org/blog/introducing-phpstan-pro" rel="nofollow">https://phpstan.org/blog/introducing-phpstan-pro</a><p>Fun part is that the CLI handles all the browser redirecting for the payment and saving the license (I guess). Just pass it a `--pro` arg and there you go.
Purely CLI tools are harder to monetize.<p>But I’ve seen REPL instances (which are command line in a way but interactive) monetized. The AMPL optimization language is monetized. The very expensive KDb+ language and database is monetized.<p>Back in the day lots of DOS shareware tools like pkzip, etc were monetized as shareware.
I'm not sure if this falls under your category but I think the folks at charm have some form of revenue:<p><a href="https://charm.sh/#enterprise" rel="nofollow">https://charm.sh/#enterprise</a>
<a href="https://imapsync.lamiral.info" rel="nofollow">https://imapsync.lamiral.info</a><p>Bought it to transfer mail from SMTP to Office365. Worth every penny.