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>I think Basecamp itself is mostly closed source, so they may have an advantage in building a business.

I think it's the exact opposite. Basecamp is mostly open source. Ruby on Rails is basically extracted from the Basecamp application. They've open sourced even their Trix Editor (https://github.com/basecamp/trix).

Edit: capitalization

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That's very cool that Basecamp is mostly open source. I really appreciate their leadership and the example they set.

The difference is that the stuff they've opened source is not stuff they're directly in the business of selling; this is quite different than trying to sell support or enterprise versions of an open source product.

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