I usually open source free apps, that I don't think I'll ever be able to sell because "who else could have the same problem as me?"
If it turns out that people have a need and want to pay for Pro features, I try my best to keep the source available for the free part of the app, and only encrypt the code that constitutes the paid features.
That happened with Lunar, and it seems to start happening with Clop as well.
I have no idea if it did impact my profits at all, but it did help other people to start competing with me. The only competitors to Lunar (MonitorControl and DisplayBuddy) started by using Lunar's code [1] for controlling monitors on Apple Silicon [2], as Lunar was the first app to get that feature.
Competition is still good though, as long as it's not break-neck competition. I learned how to make Lunar simpler in terms of menubar UI from MonitorControl, and got some ideas on how to implement Custom Presets from testing DisplayBuddy.
