Response from: Matt (Check me out!)

Sort of right, but also sort of wrong. I run a boot strapping software company focused on services software. We are in the final phase of development and can soon consolidate all those "other" bit and bobs that we run to keep the money flowing. Boot strapping is by far the way to go and open source is also a very good rute. OS software gives you the chance to get others developers to work and review your product and means that there is a fairly high rate of early adoption and word of mouth promotion. By giving away our core componants (like the Orbit42 base class) we give the impression of being a big player. Potentail clients may wish to research our claims and find our product is in use in many places. They also see the sub brands (like Orbit42) and assume enough to close the sale. After that the quality justifies the assumption. (I'm real hot on quality). At no stage do I wish to see imitators and thankfully OS development has the safegaurds I need. You see to imtate a company must throw piles of cash into finding another way to do what we do already. If they want something they can patent they have to work even harder so as to not get the OS community opening "war chest" accounts to go after them with lawers and suits and very very bad publicity. The other option if they wishto imitate is to use our product parts and thus be open source (so we get to use their work too). This increases the market size and adoption rate but leaves us as the "inventors" and thus always part of the story (and market). If big business want a closed source version they will have to buy it under license or purchase the copy right (buy us out). http://code.orbit42.com
is where the orbit42 base class can be found.

Response from: be open (Check me out!)

open source application is always a bit difficult to sell, why pay when you can get it for free? support is the key.