Moving To Open Source

09 Feb 2024 - Tim_M

The primary motivation behind the project is and never has been about money, so moving to Open Source seems like a straight forward choice to widen the community, developer and user base. But is it?

• Is the Code ready?
• Am I ready?

Is the Code Ready?

In reality, probably not. But it is still in Beta stage, so it isn’t expected to be perfect.
There is more to do to make it into a stable and useful project / product - but the basics are there and while a little clunky to use, they work.
This is where opening the project up to others at this time, seems like the right way to go.
The more eyes, the more testing and different views and opinions will be what takes it from where it is now - to a mature and stable v2.0.

Am I Ready?

Ready for what? - That is the big question!
Help, support? - Yes.
The rest? - I am not so sure.
That is why I am considering to keep the project Closed Source for the moment, grow the community slowly by building a small team of Developers and Testers to get the project close to v2.0, before opening up to the masses.

The Options

There seems to be three options available to me at present:

1. Remain a single developer / single user project.
2. Dive straight into Open Source head first and try to keep my head above water.
3. Keep the the project Closed, grow the community slowly by building a team of Developers and Testers and then open it up later on.

The Solution

While I could continue to do Option 1, to ease myself into the open source scene, I am choosing Option 3.

While this may not appease everyone, I hope that you can understand the reasoning behind it.