If your story is true, then stop talking about it already!
First,
Since you're in the U.S.A., you'll be getting into the 40-50% marginal tax bracket with federal, state, and Self-Employment Taxes. If you incorporated in an off-shore jurisdiction, you'll keep all your money. In your situation, it's completely invisible to your corporate customers where you are located. If they're willing to pay random guy in Portland, Oregon, they'll pay random company in Singapore (for example). You could even disclose the existence of the foreign company to the tax authorities. In that case, don't draw a salary or a dividend from the foreign company, and you'll still pay no U.S. tax. Let the company pay for your "business travel", "business expenses", etc. And otherwise just let the cash pile up in the foreign account.
Second,
I highly doubt you'll gain additional customers through your blog. It sounds like you get customers because they are already using the open source component, and discover they could benefit from the paid component. Your article about the $100k gets you hacker cred, but also draws competition. Blog about the open source component, and keep mum about the dough.
The IRS has already thought about this scheme. If you are a US citizen, you need to report all foreign bank accounts if the sum of foreign money is over $10k. Failure to do so is a $100k fine. I expect there are other problems here.
I had heard that you could license your software to your company, which is advantageous since apparently license fees are taxed at capital gains rates (15%). I have not verified this, however.
I upvoted you because it's an interesting dissenting opinion, and I've always wondered about whether the upside of being open beats the downside of additional competition.
We also don't know whether he paid taxes on the income (I also guess not), and, most importantly, whether his blog post will bring him additional revenue.
Do you have many examples where blogging about success brought about competition? Are there big barriers of entry to building what he built? It looks like you'd need at least 700 of developer hours, I wouldn't do it lightly.
OTOH if I had found an easy way to beat the lottery I wouldn't blog about it :P
>> We also don't know whether he paid taxes on the income (I also guess not)
Mike is an upstanding citizen and member of the open source community. There's absolutely no reason to make unfounded claims like this against his integrity.
First,
Since you're in the U.S.A., you'll be getting into the 40-50% marginal tax bracket with federal, state, and Self-Employment Taxes. If you incorporated in an off-shore jurisdiction, you'll keep all your money. In your situation, it's completely invisible to your corporate customers where you are located. If they're willing to pay random guy in Portland, Oregon, they'll pay random company in Singapore (for example). You could even disclose the existence of the foreign company to the tax authorities. In that case, don't draw a salary or a dividend from the foreign company, and you'll still pay no U.S. tax. Let the company pay for your "business travel", "business expenses", etc. And otherwise just let the cash pile up in the foreign account.
Second,
I highly doubt you'll gain additional customers through your blog. It sounds like you get customers because they are already using the open source component, and discover they could benefit from the paid component. Your article about the $100k gets you hacker cred, but also draws competition. Blog about the open source component, and keep mum about the dough.
Good luck.