Marketing budgets are thin in the region, but engineering talent is deep. Open source turns that imbalance into an advantage: instead of paying for attention, you earn it by being useful in public.
A widely used open-source tool is a permanent, compounding piece of distribution. Every developer who adopts it is a potential customer.
It is slow, but durable in a way paid ads never are.
The Catch
Open source is a long game. It rewards consistency over months, not launches over days.
Teams that treat it as a stunt get found out. Teams that treat it as a contribution get a moat.