Hell good folks, I was interested in hearing responses from others about this questions. If you work for several months on a project that turned out extremely nice, would you sell licenses for it or would you rather open source it? Take into consideration making alittle money off the project. I can see how you could make some decent money by open source, by placing Adsense ads on the site you host it and its support, but you would really have to rely on its popularity. On the other hand, if you sell licenses, there are a ton of open source products peopel can use and probably be just as happy. Last thought, would it be worth selling to someone who knows more how to market such a product? Look forward to responses. Edit - other things to consider, 1 man coding team to handle support (OS would have community support I assume)
Would it be possible to make 2 versions. One less featured open source, the second the full product and use the advertising revenue off the first to invest into the second?
Sure, let's say for example, the script is a CMS. The full featured could include forum integration with all major popular versions (VB, IPB, SMF, PHPBB) and the free is standalone or something similar.