Maybe I need a better understanding of the "open source", but if I were a software developer and the sales of my work would be my only source of income, why would I want to develop open source? I mean, if I just wrote a true killer app, but have limited marketing resources. What's to stop someone else with bigger pockets to come along and take my program, "enhance" it, and push me out of the market?

I didn't have much of an answer when asked this question by a "Linux-shy" acquaintance.

but you have to think of the upside.. with opensource and GPL license, they would have to distribute the code if copied from yours into theirs as well..
if you look at most, most don't steal or can't steal your code.. they can acutally help you by finding bugs or security holes.. and help you fix them..
if you think its really killer and can make tons of money though, don't open source it..

The fact about most small proprietary software companies is that very few manage to generate the kind of sales it takes for a company to stay in buisness year after year, especially those that are just starting off. This is due to limited resources such as equipment, personel, advertising ability, and most of all, capital. Many people are not exposed to your products and often you don't have the time to make the kind of improvements it may need.

But on the other hand, if you decide to release your software under the GPL or LGPL and distribute it over the web then many, many people will quickly come in contact with it. Then you will be the first person they contact about making changes and fixing bugs. These changes can be done for a fee. Support, maintenance, and upgrades can be hired out. If 10,000 people use your software and only 1% sign up for support then that's a hundred customers right off the bat. Not to mention large companies that may want to contract you to do specific adjustments.

You also have the added bonus of helping 10,000 people get their work done and benifiting from the changes they make to your software. It's not something you can make millions and millions off of, but you have a much higher probability of success.

Seek more answers at www.gnu.org

I see the benefit of open-sourced software being the fact that there may be holes you didn't notice, being plugged for you. This is as true for word-processors as it is for security apps.

If you need to make money from your programming skills, then work for a proprietary company and write your open apps in your spare time. Once you have an app that works, and is fairly decent, you would probably find that most of the hardwork of debugging is done for you. The only real problem is if you create an app that is much like another app. Let's say, for instance, you write a really good text editor...who's gonna download it? There's already a good million text editors around. You would need to make this killer app in a virgin area.

The problem is treating open-source as some sort of business. Open-source isn't about making money, it's about making good software. That's why Linux rocks - proprietary software is made by a company that just wants money, so all they have to do is be better than the competition (or crush the competition...) while open-source is made by people who want to make good software. Getting rich off open-source is hard, and missing the point.

thanks for all the replies. It's given me a much better perspective on open-source.