I still think you need to look at it from the point of view of an employer. Like me. I'm weird, I really care about my people, our company is more like a cooperative than anything else.

I grew this to a place where I could pay salaries. Doing so was super super hard. I had a lot of scary nights where I thought I couldn't make payroll. Just building up to a place where the next payroll was OK was a big deal for us.

So open source it? When you finally got to the point where you can pay people without worrying all night?

I get that you see that open source is the answer, and it is for some stuff. For me, jumping on that years ago was asking too much.