Ask YC: Including source code with commercial software

So, if any of you are wondering where I've disappeared to, I quit my job last week, so now I actually have work to do :-). I'm going sans partner and sans investors on a subset of the idea from my YC application. The original idea was a web service targeted at developers, but I later realized that what I thought of as down-the-road functionality of the web service would actually work well as a standalone program for the desktop. It's sufficiently limited in scope that I can make something feature-complete long before my savings run out. So, the plan is to work full time until I get to a release, and then get a new job and maintain this on the side. If it's sufficiently successful, I get back together with my partner and use the cash flow and the resume boost to jumpstart the original idea.

I'm going with a freemium licensing model: this is a database tool, and it'll be free for use with sufficiently small databases; use with larger ones carries a per-seat fee.

Anyhow: I'm giving consideration using a Minix-style license. I.e., the program includes source code, which you're permitted to modify and distribute patches against. This would essentially result in free users being on the honor system not to subvert the database-size check. There are a number of reasons that I'm considering doing this:

- Given that I expect a fairly sophisticated user base, anyone determined to circumvent the size restriction is likely going to succeed whether or not they get the source.

- The program is written in Haskell and has several dependencies licensed under the LGPL. Due to some GHC implementation details involving static linking and intermodule optimization, binary-only programs that use LGPL code are rather dubiously in compliance. With some work I could get around this, and I realize the chances of getting sued over such a thing are infinitesimal, but the necessary accomodations would be annoying and I'd feel bad about not making them.

- Although the idea behind the program is novel AFAIK, no part of what it does is especially magical, so I don't place much value on any trade secrets.

- It means that I get to crowdsource a lot of my technical support and bug-fixing.

- People will be less hesitant about using software from a small vendor for potentially mission-critical work if they know that they can do their own maintenance if necessary.

- There's a decent-sized community that gets excited about Haskell being used successfully in industry. Letting them see the source may turn some of them into customers and/or advocates. (Much as practically everyone in the Haskell community uses darcs rather than git or bzr even though the three are pretty much functionally identical.)

So, what are everyone's thoughts on this? Am I out of my mind for thinking about this? Any major pitfalls I'm overlooking?