As I understand it software being open source does not prevent you from selling it (does this depend on the type of license?) but is this a good idea?
For my pet project the target audience is for the most part non-programmers who wouldn't know how to compile the source anyway, but I still want to keep it open mostly for possible future employers to view my "portfolio" as well as to get critique from others, or just for others to learn from.
I don't expect to quit my day job from it or anything, mostly just to defray minor costs like web hosting, domain and other misc stuff, and hopefully some pocket change.
Providing support isn't really an option, it's and end-user app and one of the primary objectives is to make it as easy to use as possible.
The closest license that sounds like it'd be friendly to this is the Ms-RSL but Google Code which I'm currently using doesn't support that license, and a quick search looks like Sourceforge doesn't either (I could be wrong). It's currently GPL, but I just have a few classes stubbed out right now, so changing isn't an issue.
Are there any examples of other people doing this (success or failure)? Am I better off just asking for donations? Should I just not license it as open source (is it automatically closed source if I don't have any license but just distribute it upon request?) Any other options I haven't thought of?
Edit: What I'm more interested aside from the legal aspect is whether the practice of straight selling open source software is generally frowned upon, i.e. will I piss off customers that bought it and later found out it was open source. Should I announce it on the site or keep a one-way link from source-code to retail site but not the other way around? Announce it but not make it prominent?
Nobody will care if you try to sell your own code, even if it is opensource. The only time people get riled up is when you try to sell somebody else's opensourced code, and then only if it's in violation of the license (in letter or in spirit)