[Contractors] FOSS developer marketing benefit?

[Robert Hollingsworth]

OK, time to finally put something in this list...

My relationship with FOSS so far has been to recommend and use FOSS products in client projects. So that has been strictly beneficial 
to me and to the client, because we're able to 
use this stuff without license fees.

If, in the future, I were facing a decision
whether to create new software as closed-source
or as open-source, the argument I'd use to 
convince myself to go open-source would go
something like this:

"By actively developing this product and putting
it in the public domain, my 'fingerprints' will be 
all over it, and potential paying clients will see my
name associated with the product and will seek me
out for projects using the product."

For those of you who are active developers in FOSS
projects, how often have you found that customers
contact you primarily because they've seen your
name associated with a product?

thanks,
Robert
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