[idid]

I'm afraid I can't provide a realistic answer to your question, only my encouragement to keep things open.

Nevertheless, I am tangentially curious: once a project already is open source, can it be realistically (legally) closed up again?

Envision the following scenario: I'm just going to clone your project now, as it is - open source - on my machine. You might close it later, transfer ownership, etc. Am I not holding a legally valid open source pile of code, regardless of what Company X decided to do later?

[etewiah]

No, they can't stop anyone else from carrying on with the project. It hasn't had much take-up so far though. A few people have starred it and forked it but hardly anyone has contributed to it. I think what they are most concerned about is the MLS integration piece I'm working on at the moment which is not yet complete.

[idid]

I understand now. Thanks for clarifying :)

As a little side note - possibly helpful if you are willing to invest more time in this project in the long term: I've had some discussions long time ago with people from wikihouse [1], and am still struggling with similar issues with my own adventures (academic research sponsored by an industry network). The model wikihouse adopted was that everyone has a seat at the table, but nobody owns the table itself (or the chairs).

It can be simplistically simmered down to: If this is a core feature that will allow your project to expand and make it relevant to a wider audience, considering labelling this as a "core feature" and insist on it being part of the open source project. They could sponsor it and/or have direct support of the developer and/or "first adopter" privileges but the code will fold back in the public branch after a given time. It would help if you had another company expressing interest (maybe just ask).

Good luck with your endeavours!

[1] https://wikihouse.cc/

[etewiah]

Wow, wikihouse is pretty awesome!

Yeah, the idea of core features being open source makes sense. What I'm aiming for is that PropertyWebBuilder becomes something like WordPress for the real estate sector - a base on which value-added functionality can be built. That extra functionality can be commercial but I want to core product to remain free.