Why not go Open Source? It's just that you repeatedly mention that your main aim is to have a service that will last for ever; but there's nothing different in your service (apart from your intentions) that will guarantee that. Basically, your asking people to trust you on that one. But if it was Open Source, with good import/export features, then if it was threatened by closure people could just move their data to a…
jarofgreen: I've thought a lot about this. I'm a big proponent of open source. And I intend to giving a lot of thought to open sourcing Nilai sometime in the future - just so that (as you put it) "techie people" can run their own servers if they want. However, I think running the service is where the value really is. If someone is techie enough to grab an open source project, install it on their own server, and keep…
You didn't answer this point; and honestly I don't mean to offend you or imply your intentions are suspect - I don't know you at all, so I can't judge. But that's exactly the problem - how do you persuade ppl like me to trust you?
Compare the situation to wordpress.com vs blogger/tumblr/closed-source-blog-platform. I always look to the former first because I know it's so easy for me to move my blog onto one of many wordpress-supporting hosts or my own server if I need to, and thus I feel the longeveity of my site is guaranteed much more.
You could be in the same situation, if you Open Source it and several people ran your software as a host. That would make it easy for users to switch - and then you have a much better and practical guarantee for users that it will stick around in some form.
Anyway, last comment I'll make as obviously it's your choice in the end; but that's what I think. And I do need to look at an Open Source bookmarking service soon :-)