I met with a business advisor last week to discuss some of our upcoming business plans, and one of the topics was the development of an accounting software package. I was pleased with his questioning about why we would enter into an already crowded marketplace like accounting, and his agreement that doing so with an open-source project is a better strategy than marketing a commercial product.
Our plan is to foster a community around the PBooks program, and offer support services and "PBooks as a service" (subscription) to make money. Because the software will be open source, customers will have the option of downloading it and using it for free, but I feel confident that many companies will want to take advantage of our domain expertise and pay us to host it for them. In many scenarios, that will be the more cost effective option.
This is a great idea. It's also very conscientious of the needs of the consumer, which is often lacking in many business models. This gives the client the opportunity to work with the software and be comfortable using it. It also opens the door for customers to become familiar with some of your other programs which are excellent resources to anyone in the retail industry.