a) 100k / year is not 'reasonable', it's huge in microisv terms. The modal revenue for independent software vendors is $0 (stats from payment processors). To get there in 2 years is even less common.
b) The number of 'stars' has correlation r=0 with ability to monetize. I'd even speculate - the more stars, the more ingrained in people's heads it is 'this is open source, ergo free', the harder it will be to make money. If you're selling support for something only slightly popular, customers will have no other options - but on support for Wordpress, you have to compete with other devs, with 2$/hour rentacoder people, with Amazon selling 'teach yourself Wordpress in 60 minutes' books etc.
c) What incentive do companies have to pay for it? You have to be able to articulate it clearly before going down this path. Your wording makes me think you are thinking 'this is my secret sauce, I can't give it away', which is (frankly) very naive. If your idea is even a little bit good, you'll have to stuff it down people's throats to accept it. I don't know of any business that makes money OS software (on the software itself, not the consultancy around it) without having a dual licensing model - GPL or commercial. And if that was really a cash cow, Trolltech wouldn't have been sold a dozen times (or so) over the last 10 years...
To judge whether your product has commercial potential, you need to
1) Describe your customers. In detail. Not just 'anyone using a database', but 'medium scale accounting businesses with on-premises case database' (idiotic example, of course). You need to do this in such a way that you can derive a strategy from it on how to find them. E.g., accountants meet at industry events, where you could book a booth.
2) Identify a sample of, say, 100 of them, using the methods from step 1.
3) Start calling them. Preferably after you've taken a sales class (just 2 days will give you life changing insights, I promise). Not emailing, actually talking to people. For the 100 from step 2, identify how many would buy your product.
4) Get sales promises, 10 or 15 or so. People who you can excite so much about your product that they promise (informally) 'yes, I'll buy this if you offer it within 6 months' or whatever.
5) If you can't even do this, you have no (OK, 'barely any') hope of succeeding.
The main skill you need is marketing to succeed at an endeavor like this. The quality of your software, or its popularity amongst the crowd that uses Github, is of secondary importance at best. That's not to say that you can succeed with selling people crap product, snakeoil style, just that your life as a software vendor is 10 or 20% of software development, at best (or worst, depending on your perspective...)
BTW, no "secret sauce", just lack of willingness to submit the question in my real name at this point in the game for several reasons (current employment status, etc).
No, I took one from a local small firm, I didn't arrange it so I didn't do much research on it. I think the stuff we covered was so basic that anyone in sales would go facepalm on how basic it was, and yet for us (room full of engineers) it was so outside of what anyone of us knew, that it was one new insight after the other. Also, it did a lot of role playing exercises, which I find awkward but useful. I don't think it matter much which course somebody at my level (0 sales skills) would take. It's similar to any high school teacher being able to explain a linear function - you don't need a maths PhD for that.
a) 100k / year is not 'reasonable', it's huge in microisv terms. The modal revenue for independent software vendors is $0 (stats from payment processors). To get there in 2 years is even less common.
b) The number of 'stars' has correlation r=0 with ability to monetize. I'd even speculate - the more stars, the more ingrained in people's heads it is 'this is open source, ergo free', the harder it will be to make money. If you're selling support for something only slightly popular, customers will have no other options - but on support for Wordpress, you have to compete with other devs, with 2$/hour rentacoder people, with Amazon selling 'teach yourself Wordpress in 60 minutes' books etc.
c) What incentive do companies have to pay for it? You have to be able to articulate it clearly before going down this path. Your wording makes me think you are thinking 'this is my secret sauce, I can't give it away', which is (frankly) very naive. If your idea is even a little bit good, you'll have to stuff it down people's throats to accept it. I don't know of any business that makes money OS software (on the software itself, not the consultancy around it) without having a dual licensing model - GPL or commercial. And if that was really a cash cow, Trolltech wouldn't have been sold a dozen times (or so) over the last 10 years...
To judge whether your product has commercial potential, you need to
1) Describe your customers. In detail. Not just 'anyone using a database', but 'medium scale accounting businesses with on-premises case database' (idiotic example, of course). You need to do this in such a way that you can derive a strategy from it on how to find them. E.g., accountants meet at industry events, where you could book a booth.
2) Identify a sample of, say, 100 of them, using the methods from step 1.
3) Start calling them. Preferably after you've taken a sales class (just 2 days will give you life changing insights, I promise). Not emailing, actually talking to people. For the 100 from step 2, identify how many would buy your product.
4) Get sales promises, 10 or 15 or so. People who you can excite so much about your product that they promise (informally) 'yes, I'll buy this if you offer it within 6 months' or whatever.
5) If you can't even do this, you have no (OK, 'barely any') hope of succeeding.
The main skill you need is marketing to succeed at an endeavor like this. The quality of your software, or its popularity amongst the crowd that uses Github, is of secondary importance at best. That's not to say that you can succeed with selling people crap product, snakeoil style, just that your life as a software vendor is 10 or 20% of software development, at best (or worst, depending on your perspective...)