What business model would you propose if it was open source? GIMP and Audacity could be even better if they weren't open source. This is an incredibly small niche, far smaller than image manipulation. Open source can work well, for certain things, but there's no support contracts to sell here, and there's no product/service that could be upsold through it being made open source.
Reaper works just fine without being open source. If anything, at this point, I personally feel that going open source would do more harm than good, and I used to relate to Stallman's free software mentality. However, if you wish to participate in capitalism and have tools suitable for participation, it takes proprietary code, and money.
Yes, there are projects that are sold and are also open source, but they aren't sustainable. We did marketing for one of them, it was a sorry state of affairs with how few people are willing to actually make a contribution, either in a monetary capacity, or in terms of a pull request.
|