Hi tobs, Brad's right, I just got done moving and I'm on for the first time tonight.
Per Github/open sourcing LaunchBox, I've thought long and hard about whether I'd like to go that direction or not. I am still considering it for the long term future, but as for right now, I'm choosing not to release the source code. I have several concerns that are currently in conflict with releasing the source:
- Releasing the source for LaunchBox Premium would allow for extremely easy circumvention of the licensing. The funds I'm receiving from purchases are relatively minimal, but they help me to re-coup some of the time I spend that I could be spending on billable projects (I have paying clients that are always competing for my time).
- I very much enjoy taking in feedback from the LaunchBox community and implementing new features, but I don't think I would want to manage developers in an open source project. Every open source project needs management, and I don't currently desire to review the code of any number of developers to determine whether or not it deserves to end up in the final product.
- As can easily happen with open source projects, I'm concerned about code bloat and feature bloat. I am generally very picky about what I implement in LaunchBox because I don't want to end up with a product that is bloated or confusing to use. Whether this is a legitimate concern or not, I don't know, but it is a genuine concern of mine.
Regardless, this is something that I do re-evaluate on a regular basis. We may eventually get to the point where open-sourcing LaunchBox makes sense.
Just out of curiosity, did you want to contribute to LaunchBox yourself? Curious about the code? Or were you just looking to get development going a bit quicker?
Thanks,
Jason