> How do they get away with this? They have a unique offering and they are a trusted brand. If you have neither, you are relying on blind faith. For the vast

> How do they get away with this? They have a unique offering and they are a trusted brand. If you have neither, you are relying on blind faith. For the vast majority of business to consumer products, this isn't a problem. However, in your case, you have a product that requires the installer to be somewhat knowledgeable, hence the scrutiny. The easiest way to gain credibility is to have an incumbent vouch for you. For example, if Trello were to say, if you want to host your own Trello like solution, there is no better option than X, then most people wouldn't really care about installing a binary. Since your solution isn't novel enough for people to take that leap of faith, you really have no other choice but to make the source available or try to align yourself with an established incumbent. For example, create your product so it has tight integration with an Atlassian product and sell your solution through Atlasisan's marketplace. Or create a tight integration with GitHub and try to get it listed as an integration partner. And so forth.