Ask Slashdot: Can SaaS Be Both Open Source and Economically Viable?

An anonymous reader writes: The CTO behind Lucidchart, an online diagramming app, recently cited the open source rbush project as an invaluable tool for helping implement an "in-memory spatial index" that "increased spatial search performance by a factor of over 1,000 for large documents." My question is this: what risks does a SaaS company like Lucidchart face in making most of their own code public, like Google's recent move with Chrome for Android, and what benefits might be gained by doing so? Wouldn't sharing the code just generate more users and interest? Even if competitors did copy it, they'd always be a step behind the latest developments. Have a question for Slashdot's readers? Take a look at other recent questions first to see if someone else has had a similar question. And if not, ask away! The more details and context you include, the more likely your question will be selected.

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GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL)

[tepples]

The GNU Affero General Public License version 3 was designed to preserve user freedom and flexibility even when software runs on a leased server. It ensures that users can obtain and improve the software that they are using even when they are currently running it on someone else's computer. That way, if a particular service goes out of business, its customers can spin up an instance on their own servers with little interruption.