How can you make your commercial source code customers happy?

When engaging with a community around an open-source project, Github is likely the lowest friction option. It makes sense.

But there are other scenarios -- one is where you are delivering closed-source commercial source code to customers.

Git makes sense for delivering any source code, no matter what the context -- closed, open, etc.

Using zip files to deliver source is antiquated. Since Subversion (2000) and Git (2005), there are now other options.

With Git, is easy to deliver updates, manage changes, tag releases, and track what has happened.

Tools like Gitea/Forgejo, that wrap Git, provide nice ways to interact around the source code -- issues, pull-requests, projects, etc. Issues and pull-requests are much better ways to communicate about code than email or other messaging methods. The communication is close to the code and preserved instead of being disconnected, and eventually lost.

Gitea/Forgejo also give us unlimited organizations and users that we can create and manage. What this means is every customer can have their own organization. This provides issolation between customers. Each now has their own space to raise issues, discussion PRs, etc. You can mirror the source code they have purchased to their own organizational space, and continue updating it as long as they are a customer. If they decide to quit purchasing updates, you can leave their Gitea organization and source code intact, but simply quit updating it. This is ensures you do break build processes they already have in place and is a measure of good will.

Why not deliver the source-code to the customer's Github organization? You have less control in Github. Simple things like users not being able to create an account are now under your control. With Gitea, you have more control of the repo visibility. It is less likely someone might accidentally make a repo public in the future.

Would you like the velocity, stability, and collaboration that OSS projects have? With tools like Gitea/Forgejo, you can mirror these workflows into any software development effort.