Why not open source it like most other JS tools? You've built on top of other open-source such as node.js. Just a matter of good citizenship in the JS community.
Why the fuck is this community so against indie developers from monetizing their desktop software? Nobody complains when SAAS products or mobile apps are monetized. Hypocrisy is astounding here.
Why are you so against people giving their opinions? It doesn't read like they are saying that free and open source is the only path, just that they would prefer that it was.
Yeah, I've got to agree with the others here. There's nothing inherent with the JS community that dictates a good actor should automatically open source something they've done. He's free to assign whatever exchange of value he wants for the work that he's done, just as everyone else is free to choose whether they want to give the amount he's chosen in exchange for access to the software.
A random suggestion, then: perhaps try selling it for a few months, and if the number of sales starts to tail off and you still feel uncompensated, set a fundraising goal at which you'd release it open source?
As others said, I'm more interested in donating (and helping to persuade others to) to make it available for everyone than I am in buying a copy.
I certainly appreciate that. But also, open source and business models are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps you can open source the core code and then charge for support or extensions, like many others do with Linux, Apache, etc.
Plus, if you have more people contributing changes/additions, you might have less of a workload.
One last question for you: if I pay, do I get the source that I can tinker with/extend, or is it in a minified/obfuscated format?
