Today, I'm happy to announce that the Insomnia desktop app is now open source software under the MIT license! The source code is hosted on GitHub for your viewing pleasure.

Insomnia on GitHub

Journey to Open Source

I launched Insomnia more than two years ago with no expectation that it would grow to over 30,000 monthly users. This growth motivated me to leave my job in July of 2016 and is still the main reason I wake up every morning. Before the transition to full-time, I set a goal of documenting the journey as transparently as possible so that others could benefit from my mistakes and successes. Now, ten months later, it's time to fit the open-source piece into the transparency puzzle.

So why not open-source sooner? Fear. Fear of public judgement, fear of being told my code sucks, fear of showing how much time I spent on it. Being independent leaves you wide open with nothing to hide behind. You are the product, and the product embodies your personality. If the product is a failure, so are you. Exposing the code that powers the product just adds another dimension to criticise. That's what the voices in my head keep repeating, anyway.

The truth is that the fear I feel is irrational. Life is too short to avoid following your dreams and the Internet has a terrible memory anyway. So, here I am, setting my fear aside to continue on with the next phase of the journey.

See you on the other side 🍻

~ Gregory