[davidroetzel]

I always wanted to try and test this approach, as I am convinced that a lot (most?) of the value in SaaS is in hosting. Operating your own servers is a huge hassle, and many people will gladly pay someone to do it for them.

Also if you open source your code and offer customers a full export of their data you have two advantages over closed source SaaS: Customers do not need to worry about vendor lock-in. And they can depend on being able to continue using your software even in case you ever go out of business.