Topic: Open Source or Licensing?

Open source! There are many of us out there working on location based tech and it would be a huge gain to at least see what was done and learn.

I'd suggest following ExtJS route. Releasing BOTH GPL3.0 as well as a commercial license.

Here's the logic:
GPL3 gives you the illusion that you're committed to "open source", but actually you're poisoning the pool - ie. commercial users can't use it without giving away their code. So you get the Buzz but at the same time you're not giving away the baby.

Companies that really want to use it still have to pay you.

Have your cake and eat it too ;)

Will you resurrect the meetro technology in a business later? What is the value to you? Even if you were to reuse it sometime in the future, what would the value be at that time - would the value still hold? My inclination would be to open source the technology and let it grow.

" GPL3 gives you the illusion that you're committed to "open source", but actually you're poisoning the pool - ie. commercial users can't use it without giving away their code. So you get the Buzz but at the same time you're not giving away the baby.

Companies that really want to use it still have to pay you.
"

This is not completely true. GPL has two key exceptions - hosted companies (like google, etc) are not considered distribution, nor is use inside companies. So yes, if somebody wants to sell software with your open sourced code, they have to pay you or be GPL themselves.

My guess most of the people wanting to use your code are hosted, so they would no pay you.

All that said, open sourcing your code might still be a good idea, unless you are planning to license and continue to support it.

My biggest concern with open sourcing it is twofold.

1. that it would take some energy on our parts to clean it up
2. that without support from the original developers it would be just one of the thousands of abandonware open source projects.