Placing your product at the center of the open source movement in your field carries significant advantages. Closed API's are of no benefit to free software since it is already completely open. The result is that open source projects tend to be the leaders in creating and complying to standards . Good open source projects spend a lot of time and effort encouraging community involvement, attracting the people with ideas for improvements and features. Listen to these ideas, they will bring you new sources of revenue through the product evolving in ways you didn't expect .
Open source is a very powerful way to stimulate development.
If the project is trailing the technological leaders then those products can act as a virtual specification or roadmap for development. Only now is Linux moving out of this emulation mode. Once that roadmap runs out, the passion of the community for the project kicks in. Good businesses spend a lot of time and money trying to get in touch with and listen to their customers. Open source projects take this a step further getting the end users involved in the actual development of the product , even if it's only in the form of testing, feedback and contributing ideas.