Skunkworks

Let’s say that I am working in a software company that creates products for the self service industry. Now let’s say that this software company has a product which from features point of view is similar with the best products on the market. Also this product is very easy customizable to support different flows as per clients requests. Also let’s say that this product is actually more than a product. Is the first product made on a platform framework which can supports all possible self service transactional based applications.
For you guys to have a better idea about the selling price: we can charge up to 600$ per license and then anything between 15-25% per year in maintenance agreements.
You would say that we are in a very good position right now to take over the world of self service applications. Sadly is not the case due to the way the self service industry works and the fact that my company is small.
I was thinking what will happen if I am going to open source the product under GPL license and give the product for free (as in free beer)?
Am I going to be able to charge a small amount from the possible clients?
What should I do to manage to create a momentum?
Am I going to be able to charge a comparable amount from the clients after let’s say 6-12 months of using the product?
Am I going to be able to create a viable business model which could allow me to grow the company?
Am I going to be able to actually displace some of the heavy ones from the big retailers in US or Europe and take over the industry?

Maybe some of you guys out there can help with some answers to these questions.
Thanks in advance.

I am a proficient Windows XP user and more, but after seeing what’s Vista going to be with all the issues in relation to implementing security and the way Microsoft wants to license it, I decided that it is time for me to try to find an alternative. This was happening around a month ago after I attended a Microsoft Techday dedicated to Vista. So in the past month I used exclusively Ubuntu Linux 6.10 on my laptop. Below is the journal of what happened.

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Is funny how the IT industry goes in circles or better put it goes into a spiral. In the 70s you had only a dumb text terminal, and you could connect to an IBM mainframe and pay for the time you spent using that mainframe. In the 80s you removed your connection from the mainframe and start to use text based applications on your PC. In the early 90s you used GUI based applications on your PC. In the late 90s you used client-server applications, usually having a fat client on your PC
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