Jacks_Proprietary

I am a proud Linux user. Linux users tend to be proud. After all, it requires a bit more effort to keep your system running. We earned the right to show it off with pride. (Unlike Mac users who are proud of them selfs for no reason) And as such, I feel I owe the open source community something. Because without them, I would not be able to have such a powerful OS. So as I continue to develop more and more, I am always feeling to urge to make everything open source. (And partly because it seems like the cool thing to do) However, A thought crossed my mind the other day that made me doubt my loyalty to open source...

I am working with Mode:Green right now, developing software to monitor wireless hardware. Thermostats, Light switches, etc. The brand of hardware that we have been working with has no public documentation. It it clearly not open source and they pretend that every little thing is supposed to be a big secret. So, in order to meet the business need, I had to hack into the software and figure out how to pull all the information needed. So I invested all the time into sniffing network traffic, watching naming patters and poking around. And in the end, I got my hands on everything I wanted.

Somewhere along the lines I started thinking about making the Mode:Green software open source, so anyone can monitor their hardware. I know my boss would not be to happy about that because he is excited to charge an arm and a leg for what everyone else wants. And I quickly found my self taking that same side. Why should I give away all this information for free. I spent several hours cracking into this stuff, where is my reward for figuring it out?

I do not mind sharing things I have figured out, thats why I have a blog. But I need to pay the bills too. Is open source really all its cracked up to be?