Going opensource with a project
In my previous job I architected a system/language to build large finanical models. Company got acquired, I couldn't get a long with new management so I quit. Tried to do a start up but that went south and now I'm at another job that's very nice. So far, so good.

But, I still have a bunch of code lying around that took me half a year to write (a version 3.0 so just the coding, thinking was done over years) and I'd hate to see it go to waste.
 
So now I'm thinking to upload that to a open source project hosting site to see if anyone else would like to help on it as a pet project. (I really like the subject, think of it as a crossover between Excel, OO and Sql with concepts from Olap, functional programming and intentional programming.)

Couple of issues/ rants I'd like to have your input on before I just upload it somewhre. Hard to put the genie back in the bottle.

 1. Ownership. Suppose this thing works out ok and we get good software that we could make money with. How would you deal with such a case? Can anyone just download it and use it commercially? How can I (we if someone decides to pitch in) protect that? Actually the value to the customer would in be the models that run on it, no so much the system itself.

 3. What is the best place to do such a thing? Codeplex, SourceForge, etc. Any reason to take one over the other? (Whole thing is based on MS technology so far C#, Sql, ANTLR)

 4. Anyone else been in this situation, what did you do? 

 5. Thoughts, tips? 

Thanks in advance,

Gert-Jan



Going opensource with a project
===

In my previous job I architected a system/language to build large finanical models. Company got acquired, I couldn't get a long with new management so I quit. Tried to do a start up but that went south and now I'm at another job that's very nice. So far, so good.

But, I still have a bunch of code lying around that took me half a year to write (a version 3.0 so just the coding, thinking was done over years) and I'd hate to see it go to waste.
 
So now I'm thinking to upload that to a open source project hosting site to see if anyone else would like to help on it as a pet project. (I really like the subject, think of it as a crossover between Excel, OO and Sql with concepts from Olap, functional programming and intentional programming.)

Couple of issues/ rants I'd like to have your input on before I just upload it somewhre. Hard to put the genie back in the bottle.

 1. Ownership. Suppose this thing works out ok and we get good software that we could make money with. How would you deal with such a case? Can anyone just download it and use it commercially? How can I (we if someone decides to pitch in) protect that? Actually the value to the customer would in be the models that run on it, no so much the system itself.

 3. What is the best place to do such a thing? Codeplex, SourceForge, etc. Any reason to take one over the other? (Whole thing is based on MS technology so far C#, Sql, ANTLR)

 4. Anyone else been in this situation, what did you do? 

 5. Thoughts, tips? 

Thanks in advance,

Gert-Jan


