1. What's the business model that uses open source?
2. Yes, I have an opinion. Fooling around with open sourcing the project is easier than shipping something useful and finding users and engaging with them. Until a significant fraction of people care about the project, nobody cares whether it's open source.
3. Open sourcing a project is not a road to free labor. Building a community of users is a potential way to garner useful pull requests. But a community of users comes first.
4. Generally, my impression is that building a community of open source users is harder than finding customers for a business.
2. Yes, I have an opinion. Fooling around with open sourcing the project is easier than shipping something useful and finding users and engaging with them. Until a significant fraction of people care about the project, nobody cares whether it's open source.
3. Open sourcing a project is not a road to free labor. Building a community of users is a potential way to garner useful pull requests. But a community of users comes first.
4. Generally, my impression is that building a community of open source users is harder than finding customers for a business.
Good luck.