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Discussion on: There are plenty of good reasons to do open source for free

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ryuuji159 profile image
Daniel Cortés

I have doubts about open sourcing a project that I'm doing, is a java app that aims to help little restaurant business doing their diary accounting.
My idea is to eventually sell it to local business but at the same time I don't know any open source solution for this. I would love to hear what other people thinks about this. Should it be open source and sell the support or I just go closed source and forget about it

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jerodsanto profile image
Jerod Santo

It depends on what you mean by:

My idea is to eventually sell it to local business

If by this you mean sell the software as a service that local businesses can pay for on a recurring basis, then I don't think open sourcing it will hinder you much there. Restaurants aren't well equipped to self-hosting open source applications, so you won't lose too much business in that regard.

If instead you mean sell the software as in the intellectual property to a local business... in this case I'd keep it proprietary because if it's open source they have no incentive to purchase it from you.