[leppr]

As an offender to this kind of behavior, I think it's more of a feeling that the only really compelling arguments against open-source apply only to commercial software, so you, the author of a free app, may be more easily convinced into open-sourcing.

And actually I'm curious, what would you say is your main reason for keeping the source code of your free tools private? (ugly code being a totally acceptable answer to which I can relate :))

[gerry_shaw]

As a developer that has closed source free programs and has run open source programs, sometimes I just don't want to deal with the extra effort of having to manage an open source project. This is usually true when I'm building something for myself but then share (for free) where I think others might enjoy using.

[leppr]

Well, open-sourcing doesn't mean you have to manage anything, it's perfectly fine to say you don't take any external contribution and expect people to fork the project if they want to.