Cryptocurrency trading application: open or closed source?

[Maharaja]

Hello, I'm developing a cryptocurrency trading application (winforms) which supports all major exchanges and a few smaller ones, but I'm not quite sure if I should release the application as closed or open source. My goal is to contribute to the community as well as earning a few BTC with it: not much, around 1-2 BTC is my first goal to reach to compensate for the time I and a co-worker spent developing it.

I'm afraid that with a closed source, licensed model most members of the community would react with distrust. The application might contain a wallet stealer, keylogger, trojan, viruses and/or whatnot. Not at all my intention, but after browsing through the announcements on this forum I think this reaction is inevitable.

With the open source model there would be less distrust, but just one way to make revenue and that is by asking for donations and I'm a bit nervous nobody would.

Can you please help me out and point me in the right direction? Are there any success stories (both models) I can look up? Am I missing a distribution model?

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[daybyter]

Well, I cannot really give you a good answer, because I just don't know it. But if you have the answer, would you let me know it?

But I can tell you, what I did so far: I released my trade API implementations as opensource and now I have some people using them in their apps. That helped to find some bugs.

I did not release any trading strategies to the public, although I gave the sources to a dozen interested developers.

[BitCoinDream]

Hello, I'm developing a cryptocurrency trading application (winforms) which supports all major exchanges and a few smaller ones, but I'm not quite sure if I should release the application as closed or open source. My goal is to contribute to the community as well as earning a few BTC with it: not much, around 1-2 BTC is my first goal to reach to compensate for the time I and a co-worker spent developing it.

I'm afraid that with a closed source, licensed model most members of the community would react with distrust. The application might contain a wallet stealer, keylogger, trojan, viruses and/or whatnot. Not at all my intention, but after browsing through the announcements on this forum I think this reaction is inevitable.

With the open source model there would be less distrust, but just one way to make revenue and that is by asking for donations and I'm a bit nervous nobody would.

Can you please help me out and point me in the right direction? Are there any success stories (both models) I can look up? Am I missing a distribution model?

Mt. Gox source code is already open. Why dont u modify it a little and re-implement it ? ....just a thought

[Maharaja]

Well, I cannot really give you a good answer, because I just don't know it. But if you have the answer, would you let me know it?

But I can tell you, what I did so far: I released my trade API implementations as opensource and now I have some people using them in their apps. That helped to find some bugs.

I did not release any trading strategies to the public, although I gave the sources to a dozen interested developers.

What I have built is a application on top of al the trading APIs and found it rather uncomfortable to release all the code to the public, but I think I will do it anyway. Distrusting comments from cummity members worry me more that releasing the source code. As for the business model I will take the feature voting with BTC option. This way I probably can make a few BTC off my time invested in a non invasive way. I'm really looking forward to release it to the community and getting feedback, because it's the first application I really finished personally in quite a few years (allthough being a software developer most of my life now).

Mt. Gox source code is already open. Why dont u modify it a little and re-implement it ? ....just a thought

I'm not looking to create the next exchange, I'm building an application on top of all the exchanges.

[daybyter]

I took me reeeaaally long to find a few people, who contributed to my tradelib, so be patient...

https://github.com/ReAzem/cryptocoin-tradelib

[Maharaja]

I took me reeeaaally long to find a few people, who contributed to my tradelib, so be patient...

https://github.com/ReAzem/cryptocoin-tradelib

Lets just say: I'm very patient . Quite an impressive stash of code you have there!

[Maharaja]

Just a little preview of what I've built so far:







Shameless plug warning: if you're interested in receiving future updates, please follow www.facebook.com/getalltrade . [/spam:off]

[daybyter]

Don't be disappointed, but it seems to me, you got the same problem, that I have: I can code, but I'm a lousy designer... 

The lib is only about 25% of my actual project, an you don't see anything when the cool stuff is running. But my desktop UI also looks poor...

https://i.imgur.com/xpqoqnk.png

https://i.imgur.com/OoP0aNo.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/MqHfF.jpg

And my main target is android at the moment, where a good UI even matters a lot more, if you want to sell an app... 

[Maharaja]

I'm not disappointed: I'm actually well aware of the design challenge I have . I now have my focus on developing functions, not designing the app. You're right that most of the work isn't even remotely visible to the user. Too bad .

[daybyter]

So you have the same problem, that I have...cool app, but the look...