Comment Re:what do your customers need? (Score 1) 325
The best choice would be if you could incorporate those algorithms into your hardware. Can you add a small DSP do the hardware? That doesn't just protect your code, it actually may also make your hardware easier to use (fewer software dependencies). On the other hand, that way, you won't get any improvement from the community.
I agree with this 100% - to the extent that it's the approach I've decided to take with my own startup. If your 'secret sauce' would benefit from real-time performance or hardware acceleration (FPGA or DSP), then proprietary firmware plus an open source host application stack is a great combination. The open source benefits wouldn't come from other people hacking on the core algorithms anyway - the main justification is to make it as easy as possible for other people to adapt and extend the technology to meet their own needs.