loss leader?

loss leader?

As one of the two people who decided to go the open source route and as the developer of 99.999% of Quasar I can tell you that the choice to go open source is a more complicated one than simply saying its a loss leader. There is a pride aspect of seeing your software used all over the world and I personally get a lot out of this. There is a feeling that the business accounting area has reached the point where its ripe for a good open source product to take over and I want my product to be that and not one of the ones that have to react to it happening. There is a desire to move to more of a support and consulting role rather than trying to sell our product because I think there is more money in this and that its a better model for our product and the market. There is a desire to give something back to the open source community for all I've received in development tools and other software. There is the desire to get more eyes on the code and more testers to make Quasar a better product. There is the feeling that Linux is such a wonderful fit for business operations and the desire to see it used more in this area. Its hard to decide which of these is the most dominant one since it changes over time...

And there are also negative aspects to the open source route. There is the fear that you will lose all control of your product after many years of very long hours to get it where it is. There is the worry that I've done something really stupid in the code so it can be daunting to have it all hanging out there for review. There is the worry that you will be misunderstood in the effort to try to balance open source with making a living. There is the fear that while this may make Quasar very popular it might kill the revenue stream that I depend on to allow me to continue working on Quasar.

I hope to help build a community around Quasar and to see it grow into a giant of the business accounting world and of course I hope to find a way to make a buck along the way to stay in business!