Thank you! I'm a bit torn on open source. On one hand, I absolutely love the freedom of open source software and I want to help support that movement too, but I don't want to deal with the burdens of being an open source maintainer (eg. what happened to faker.js). I would much rather code what I want, at my own pace, than deal with feature requests/bug reports/questions/pull requests/etc. while Quickz is still growing.
Perhaps I might consider open source in the future. It's a difficult choice.
Do not open source this... You've created a business not a library or a framework.
I have no idea what the intentions of the GP were but you should definitely retain ownership of your code. Try to sell it. Try to get ad money. If nothing else just have fun with it.
It's also crowded market with lots of free alternatives out there already. Not everything posted as a Show HN is a business opportunity waiting to be exploited.
I'm not saying this should be open sourced either though. In fact it "shouldn't" be anything. It's something created for fun. All this pressure placed on a 15 year old to either open source or create a business out of it is insane. Just let the kid have fun like we did when we were hacking stuff together at 15.
No, they most likely have an open core model where advanced and business oriented features are typically kept as a separate code base with distinct licensing.
GitLab as an example keeps them in the same repo but separates the structure so business features are clearly and distinctly licensed under a business license.
I don't know of a serious business that has a completely open source code base.
You've made a great project, and I can see your concern about open source. However, just to give you the opposing point of view, open source doesn't always mean community-driven development. For example, Rich Hickey, creator of Clojure, has an article about that: https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95.... From the article:
> The only people entitled to say how open source 'ought' to work are people who run projects, and the scope of their entitlement extends only to their own projects.
> Just because someone open sources something does not imply they owe the world a change in their status, focus and effort, e.g. from inventor to community manager.
> Open source is a licensing and delivery mechanism, period. It means you get the source for software and the right to use and modify it. All social impositions associated with it, including the idea of 'community-driven-development' are part of a recently-invented mythology with little basis in how things actually work, a mythology that embodies, cult-like, both a lack of support for diversity in the ways things can work and a pervasive sense of communal entitlement.
I can totally understand not choosing to open source it, it's your project and yours alone. But that also means that you're free to put it on the internet under a permissive license, and refuse any contribution. Another example of the "Open source, not open contribution" stance is SQLite: https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html. There are lots of entitled people asking for free development time from maintainers. You don't owe them anything. This software is your intellectual property. It is yours and yours alone, no one should expect anything from you. With all that said, I understand not open sourcing it to not even take the risk, it's very easy to say "just ignore those people", but it can be very hard to do.
Perhaps I might consider open source in the future. It's a difficult choice.