Normalize Identifying Corporate Devices in Your Software did the numbers on HackerNews and Lobsters back in October.
There were a couple of great comments from people who "got it", and it also inspired people to start creating libraries to detect MDM enrollment.
Predictably, there was also a great deal of naysaying. And once again, predictably, it was all unfounded.
In On Open Source Mythology I contrasted the popular myths that a project will not see adoption or contributions without using an OSI-approved license with real data points from my experience building komorebi.
In this article, I will contrast the myth that attempting to identify corporate devices will have a net negative impact on a project with real data points from my experience implementing corporate device identification in komorebi.
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Corporate device identification was rolled out in komorebi v0.1.39 on 12/10/2025
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In addition to the release notes, I included a prominent explanation at the top of the project README for the largest group of non-corporate users enrolled in some form of MDM who would likely see a prompt
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There have been around 17k downloads of v0.1.39 just over a month later, which looks consistent with the download numbers of previous releases
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There have been 26 new annual Individual Commerical Use License (ICUL) purchases since v0.1.39 rolled out - as I write this post there are 118 active ICUL subscriptions which represent every subscription, monthly and annual, created and maintained since January 2025
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These 26 post-v0.1.39 ICUL subscriptions represent over 20% of the total number of current active ICUL subscriptions
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I have added overrides for 43 users who run the software on devices either provided by their educational institutions, or which require BYOD MDM enrollment to access university resources
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I have not kept track of the exact number of people who were surprised to see that their devices were enrolled in some form of BYOD MDM without their knowledge due to dark UI patterns, but it is significantly higher than I would have expected, and the Discord community is now helping people in this situation take back control of their personal devices
On the whole, this has been a very pleasant experience for me as a maintainer.
It has been so great to exchange emails and have real interpersonal interactions both with students around the world using my software and corporate users who have recently purchased licenses.
The feedback from users has been unanimously supportive, and many people in the wider software development community have reached out both publicly and privately to congratulate me on the positive outcome of this experiment.
One user even reached out to let me know after I had tweaked the corporate device identification heuristics on a nightly release that it was no longer detecting his corporate device so that I could fix this regression.
As a result of the success of corporate device identification in komorebi, this month I have made enough money from this project to cover my rent for the first time since I wrote the first line of code for komorebi's predecessor yatta in 2020.
(If you're interested in the financials of the project, check out the 2025 financial breakdown)
Perhaps this is not such an eye-catching feat when we see AI startups raising tens and hundreds of millions of dollars every other week, but it is a significant milestone for me.
I believe this milestone holds also holds a special importance in proving out a viable alternative for independent software developers to the open source model of:
- Arbitrarily setting the Exchange-Value of their works to zero through fear of becoming excommunicado in their software social circles
- Watching corporations exploit the incredible Use-Value of their works and begging for scraps
- Relying on mutual aid in the form of sponsorships from people who themselves are usually also a layoff and a medical emergency away from financial ruin
So what's next?
- I'll be looking at ways to improve the experience of implementing overrides for students
- komorebi for Mac will be made public before the end of January 2025 and will include corporate device identification from the very first release
- I'll continue working behind the scenes with independent software developers who are interested exploring the post-open source licensing space
If you have any questions or comments you can reach out to me on Bluesky and Mastodon.
If you're interested in what I read to come up with software like komorebi, you can subscribe to my Software Development RSS feed.
If you'd like to watch me writing code while explaining what I'm doing, you can also subscribe to my YouTube channel.
If you would like early access to komorebi for Mac, you can sponsor me on GitHub.