Share source with competitors?

[Iketh]

I'm writing a new program that has several competitors already in circulation. My program performs analysis in a much different manner than these other programs for the sake of being far more accurate, which my competitors cannot match with their methods.

My competitors have their source available to the public. This is done to control fears of maliciousness. I haven't released mine yet (I didn't know how before) and was about to when I got a request for the source from the author of the program that leads all others in downloads by a huge margin.

It's a freeware program. I'm not charging and neither are my competitors, but I still want to become the go-to software and I'm really hesitant on releasing my method of obtaining my results because it's taken me 4 months of research to get to this point and I'd hate to just hand it over to my competition.

I'm hosting on codeplex.com. It's an outstanding site to launch a project from, but it requires the source to be freely available.

I have no education beyond high school and desperately need insight from those that have it.

 

[Melvin11]

hi guys,,,
Its a freeware program so i advice you not to spend too much on its marketing.Better study your rival techniques and find out the cheaper one that suits you.If you want to put your money at stake you can hire a person to promote your software.

 

[old_school]

I woudl suggest selling the rights of your source to them. I mean it's likely they will just give it away and you will give yours away for free in the end liekly as well. So probly best to make something off of the time spent on the project.