So, I'm currently looking to justify an open-source development model for good chunks of our codebase at our startup (in addition to a more flexible IP policy, but that's only somewhat related).

I'm curious how others have justified this from a business perspective.

Current arguments for:

  * Having open-source helps developers' careers if they decide to move on (they can talk about what they did)
  * Open-source helps those building on your company's product (because they can file better bug reports)
  * Open-source helps everyone by reducing the number of wheels that need to be reinvented
  * Open-source is the "Right Thing To Do" if you heavily use other open-source projects in your product.
  * Having an open-source policy helps attracts higher quality developers
  * Having open-source increases the chances of being acquihired
  * Having open-source may change the way the market behaves about a new category of product and encourage adoption
  * Having open-source encourages customers who may be scared of proprietary/black-box solutions

Current arguments against:

  * Older, larger market players may take advantage of open-source to put us out of business
  * Newer players in the market may get a jump-start on the tech problems given our open-source

Neutral observations:

  * If we're making 3rd-party integration easy and documenting everything, it's almost open-source anyways (can always just clone the HTTP APIs and so forth, and build from that spec)
  * Heavy market regulation and compliance requirements discourage free-for-all development

I'd love feedback, especially picking apart the pros.

If you've ever actually seen any of the cons happen, I'd also love to hear about it.

I can't help but notice that Datastax, Red Hat, Docker, Canonical, and many other vendors don't seem to have any problems publishing all their source and still keeping a profit based off of services and the hard business stuff.

user:	ayr-ton
created:	February 11, 2015
karma:	7
about:	[ my public key: https://keybase.io/ping_ayrton; my proof: https://keybase.io/ping_ayrton/sigs/19ldYH-m3DQTsxxciXJPfnzxiZxOmzM7152UojKDBD0 ]