Licensing it runs into another hurdle. How much value does random feature give you? Is the feature valuable enough to justify custom licensing costs? Would 100

Licensing it runs into another hurdle. How much value does random feature give you? Is the feature valuable enough to justify custom licensing costs? Would 100 lines of Python/NLTK give you enough value for your target market? I'm researching this right now for theme clustering. There are some products available for purchase/license that provide reasonable results. The question is if the difference between these reasonable results and 100 lines of Python/Clojure sitting ontop of Storm is enough to justify the cost of the license. That question relates to how much value our 100 line knockoff get our clients vs the extras that a full-feature solution would bring. In the few times I've done the comparison before, it has not been worth buying. Edit: I want to make it clear I'm not saying build it yourself 100% or that building it yourself will give you a reasonable facsimile in all (maybe any instances) with NLTK/OpenNLP/etc. If summarizing is a core feature of your product, by all means, license away. What I'm specifically referencing are situations where maybe I'd like to add a feature, but it's highly unlikely that the single feature along is going to drive a sale. In these circumstances, build it yourself with NLTK or the like is extremely attractive.