[xmjee]

> I was programming off of those specs and quickly realized that all of the "fun stuff" was already figured out and I was just typing in code, so I started hiring out the programming work.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I figured.

As far as your status goes, in my book you can't easily transfer that to opensource projects: You do need to go through a bit of the programming work yourself, again, to see how things work in order to get to that same position you fill with respect to business prospects.

At this point I'd say: team up with a few opensource-interested developers and form your own project, from scratch.