Hey Cyranix, yeah the db will definitely be an asset, especially when it comes time to test the business model of recruiting. Sam Altman's comment on stage about recruiters being sorts sleazy is definitely true, and so casts some doubt on our business model research, but we really do want to try the viral method before putting up a paywall.
We did in fact speak with Sam at startup school, pretty small world I guess. He not only had good data about what it took to get devs interested but what kind of conversation rates we could expect from interest -> pull request -> valuable input. To be fair, Sam does keep 10% of his codebase proprietary so it's not 100% out there.
I know I'm quite late to the party, but I actually keep 100% of the source code open. The only parts I keep in a secret repo are tied to keys, hostnames and addresses, and certificates. But, just having a secret repo where sensitive information (including proprietary algorithms) was enough to satisfy the few investors I talked to.
Mind you, my next project is closed source, as I plan to open-source reusable pieces that will actually help people instead of a massive codebase that few have the means to run.
We did in fact speak with Sam at startup school, pretty small world I guess. He not only had good data about what it took to get devs interested but what kind of conversation rates we could expect from interest -> pull request -> valuable input. To be fair, Sam does keep 10% of his codebase proprietary so it's not 100% out there.