I'm probably not saying anything that people haven't already said against open source, but I am concerned about the potentially casual nature of people's comittment to the project both at its inception and in subsequent revisions / versions.
So, one - coherence: A platform with multiple programmers' fingers in the pie could run off easily in multiple directions. I'd rather continue to pay for something written with a coherent approach than to download freeware that seems to conflict with itself, or worse, find that the freeware boasts features that are only half-heartedly developed because other contributors got excited in the beginning and then faded away and left stuff hanging.
Two - follow-through: I would imagine that in the end, no one who touched the programming would have a complete picture of the overall program, what certain features did, or have coherent and fluid documentation, and you would be left in a position (the entire community would be left in a position) of those same people making themselves available to tackle updates. 5.1 might need some tweaks by people who worked on various parts, but those people are now longer available (at least not all at the same time) to push out a revision, so, I think it's too easy for freeware to become crapware unless there is more than just excitement about it - there needs to be solid commitment throughout the product's lifecycle, free or otherwise. Imagine that 5.x is open source, and the entire community is relying on this new programmer to make a wonderful new feature come to life, and suddenly the entire release is threatened because that person must withdraw from the project for whatever possible reason.
Three, vision: turnover in programmers might result in new programmers instigating a mid-stream change to the program that leads it in a direction not originally intended, either by the original person who touched that bit of programming, or, by the community at large, and then work would be needed to steer the program back on track.
So, oversight and follow-through would be my concerns. While daunting in its size, I'm sure, for one person to program, if you make it open source, there may be trade-offs that dim the program's popularity.
One thing you could do, possibly, as a half-step to opening up to the possibility of people helping you, is for you to make the backbone of the program, and other people write modules for it, so one person is writing an array handler, another is writing a text parser, etc., and the modules are granular enough that the sudden loss of any programmer's time wouldn't pull the carpet from beneath the project. You wouldn't want the same programmer who is burning out on writing a portion of the GUI be the same person who is burning out on script parsing, or what have you, but cutting the program's development into a lot of tiny pieces means lots of programmers touching it at the same time, or having them tackle those pieces one piece at a time, and therein slowing release.
Not sure what is the best answer, and I feel for you as far as the need to offload some of the programming overhead. I'm sure whatever decision you finally come to will be the best. Good luck
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