Software developers: Open source or proprietary?

[Reverend Conehead]

Have you ever been faced with the choice between releasing a piece of software as either open source or proprietary? I'm facing that choice really soon. It's either:

A. Release it as open source and contribute to the FOSS community.
B. Sell it and maybe make some money.

I'm torn.

 

[Reality]

The key to FOSS if you're going to go that route is the FOSS license you choose for it.

The main reason to release FOSS software though is usually when 1) you have no interest in monetizing it in anyway, or 2) its complex and large enough you need more people working on it to help improve it.

These days, the majority of people that release software as both FOSS and proprietary do so either intending to focus on providing cloud services for it (like hosting) or support contracts because its complex enough to need it.

I think the real questions are ..

If you release the software as FOSS, why would people pay for your proprietary version?

Will your paid version have more features that are not found in the FOSS version?

 

[Creeper]

It depends on how much money can be made and what the software does. If it is a huge money maker with a big market, then make it proprietary and sell it. If it is niche software that can be enjoyed by the development community then open source it.

How much time did you put into it?

 

[Reverend Conehead]

It depends on how much money can be made and what the software does. If it is a huge money maker with a big market, then make it proprietary and sell it. If it is niche software that can be enjoyed by the development community then open source it.

How much time did you put into it?

I first wrote versions 1 through 2 in 2002 through 2005 in MS Visual BASIC 6. Back then, I released it as freeware. By that I mean it was monetarily free to download, but I didn't release my source code. I quit using Visual BASIC because it's become obsolete and I also want to write cross-platform programs. I've been writing version 3 in Python with Qt and PySide6, and it's going well. I'm not just rewriting all the old features. I'm upgrading it to make it better. I'll have the Linux and Windows versions done about the same time, but the Mac version will need to wait until I actually own a Mac. Obviously, I would need to compile and test that one on a Mac.