Sunday, January 15, 2012

Open-source or closed-source for SaaS?

Initially I was going closed-source all the way, or at least until we
have a good reputation, and open-sourcing will only improve that rep.

Recently though, I've been thinking about open-sourcing the entire solution.

Various popular SaaS solutions have open-sourced under AGPL and are
generating revenue. For instance, Gitorious
(http://gitorious.com/subdomain) is AGPL but they make profit. OpenERP
as does OpenERP.

I am building an ecommerce solution, and am considering offering free
use of part of the system, pay per/month to use the entire system.

By making the solution open-source, couldn't a competitor just
download my project and offer it at a cheaper fee per/month?

If I open-source, will that increase or decrease my revenue?

To reiterate my question: Should I open-source the project, or keep it
closed-source?

Thanks for the advice,

Alec Taylor

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