This seems like an interesting business-model, charge for the open source software because it is worth the money for your customers, and nobody could do the same as cheaply, and because you fly under the radar.
But assume profits are increasing and competitors arise. Then what would you do? How would you compete with them? Would you try to make the publicly distributed software less maintainable by for instance reducing the amount of documentation that comes with it?
You might have multiple versions of your source-code, some with comments and some without. You could then choose whether to distribute the version with code-comments or one without.
You might go further and apply some kind of "minifier" to your source making it harder to understand and thus modify.
As far as I understand it GPL gives rights to the users of the software but puts few if any restrictions on the provider of the software. So would it therefore make sense to distribute (only) a minified version of your source-code? That would make it easier for you to compete against your competition.
But assume profits are increasing and competitors arise. Then what would you do? How would you compete with them? Would you try to make the publicly distributed software less maintainable by for instance reducing the amount of documentation that comes with it?
You might have multiple versions of your source-code, some with comments and some without. You could then choose whether to distribute the version with code-comments or one without.
You might go further and apply some kind of "minifier" to your source making it harder to understand and thus modify.
As far as I understand it GPL gives rights to the users of the software but puts few if any restrictions on the provider of the software. So would it therefore make sense to distribute (only) a minified version of your source-code? That would make it easier for you to compete against your competition.