ConfusedInPalo

I have your email address now, so feel free to edit it out of the post. Thanks.

Thanks for your reply, and sorry for the delay in mine. I would be happy to speak with you in more detail if you'd like (I can also share my experiences with you in case they are of value to you should you pursue a security startup of your own). I did not find an email address in your profile however.

Thank you everyone for your responses.

@razeonex @bestan

I have considered the Open Source route, but I do believe it basically closes the door on compensating contributors sufficiently. If the software gained any traction, other security companies would simply integrate the functionality into their own offerings with full access to the source code. Even restricting use fro re-sale would offer little practical protection as litigating a company for violating the terms would be prohibitively expensive. It is something I would strongly consider if I didn't feel a sense of obligation to others to compensate their work to this point.

@Carbide

I am a rather firm believer that, particularly in a space that is traditionally as conservative as IT Security, software startups need to have founders or investors who have direct influence into other organizations to land early adopters. As you mentioned, once you have a few marquee customers it gets easier. But our lack of experience and connections have hurt us there. As a point of clarification, I don't have interest into selling to consumers, only giving the software away for free to them to do some good with the technology.