Collab Hub, the Forge, and Business-Friendly Open Source

Open Source Fridays: Building Together on Collab Hub

At Buildly, we’ve spent years working with startups, agencies, and public-sector teams who want to use open source — but often struggle with the realities of licensing, sustainability, and long-term ownership.

That’s exactly why we built Collab Hub.

Collab Hub is our open collaboration space for developers, founders, and partners to work on practical, production-ready open-source software — tools that solve real problems and can be safely used in commercial products.

This post kicks off our Open Source Fridays series, where we’ll highlight the community, projects, and philosophy behind how we build.

The Buildly Community: Open Source With Intent

Open source shouldn’t mean:

* “Good luck maintaining this”

* License confusion

* Projects that never make it to production

The Buildly community is made up of developers and product leaders who care about:

* Clear ownership and contribution paths

* Sustainable open-source development

* Software that is safe to use in real businesses

Collab Hub is where that collaboration happens — transparently, in the open, and with shared incentives.

The Forge: A Marketplace for Open Source You Can Actually Use

Inside Collab Hub lives the Forge — our open-source marketplace.

The Forge hosts a growing collection of applications, templates, and components that teams can:

* Use immediately

* Extend and customize

* Deploy in real products

Many Forge projects use a business-friendly open-source license that automatically converts into a lifetime commercial license once you build on it.

That means:

* No recurring license fees

* No legal ambiguity

* No last-minute rewrites before launch

It’s open source that respects both developers and businesses.

Browse the Forge marketplace: https://collab.buildly.io/marketplace/

ForgeWeb: A Practical Example

One of the most used projects in the Forge is ForgeWeb.

ForgeWeb is what we use internally to launch:

* Marketing websites

* Brochure sites

* Early startup landing pages

It’s designed to help teams:

* Get something live quickly

* Avoid over-engineering early

* Track important marketing and product signals from day one

For early-stage startups, that combination of speed + insight is often more valuable than a “perfect” site.

Learn more about ForgeWeb: https://collab.buildly.io/marketplace/app/forgeweb/

Why This Matters

We believe open source should:

* Empower developers

* Reduce friction for startups

* Be honest about commercial realities

Collab Hub and the Forge are our way of putting that belief into practice — creating a shared space where open collaboration leads to sustainable software.

This is just the beginning.

Every Friday, we’ll highlight new projects, contributors, and ideas coming out of the Buildly ecosystem.

If you’re building something and want to do it openly, but responsibly we’d love to build with you.