[arrowgunz]

>I think Basecamp itself is mostly closed source, so they may have an advantage in building a business.

I think it's the exact opposite. Basecamp is mostly open source. Ruby on Rails is basically extracted from the Basecamp application. They've open sourced even their Trix Editor (https://github.com/basecamp/trix).

Edit: capitalization

[williamstein]

That's very cool that Basecamp is mostly open source. I really appreciate their leadership and the example they set.

[33degrees]

The difference is that the stuff they've opened source is not stuff they're directly in the business of selling; this is quite different than trying to sell support or enterprise versions of an open source product.