

Is There Money in Open Source? - cwan
http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/is-there-money-in-open-source/

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muhfuhkuh
Red Hat makes tons of money providing the foundations from which alot of the
stated technologies can operate: Linux OS, JBoss middleware, cloud and
virtualization technology, and major support for the biggie databases (MySQL,
PostgreSQL).

They're the guys selling the picks, sluice pans, and LAMPs (haha) for the gold
miners.

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tzs
Wait...Red Hat provides support for MySQL? The same Red Hat that is upset that
Oracle (owner of MySQL) provides support for Red Hat (or a minor variant of
Red Hat)? Interesting.

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zppx
> Red Hat provides support for MySQL?

No. But it does have mysql packages in the distribution.

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zdw
There is definitely money providing services related to open source software,
just as there is with providing services for closed source software.

Plenty of people make their living by doing installations, writing books,
creating custom code (either internally or released to upstream), fixing bugs,
deploying hardware with it preinstalled, and other things in common with any
software project.

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kenjackson
_writing books_

Really? I know some people who are amoung the most notable names in tech
books, and almost none of them make a living from the books they write. What I
usually hear is the book gets them in the door for speaking engagements and
consulting, but the books themselves don't pay much of an hourly rate.

But I do agree that you can make a living with open source software, but
you're not likely going to be able to get rich.

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joelhooks
I got to co-author a book last year and it hasn't come close to even minimum
wage yet.

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fooliantor
OOS is a multi-billion dollar business.

Solr and Lucene are the largest search-related software today and Lucid
Imagination provides services around it.

Redhat, IBM, Oracle, and even Facebook regularly release OSS and it's
certainly related to huge profits it makes as well.

Don't forget SuSE, github, collabnet, wordpress, sonatype, sourceforge, and
TONS more..

The list goes on and on, but yes, it's a different demographic and the
economics work different - BUT there is TONS of money to be made in OSS.

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avolcano
There's certainly money in enterprise, but not so much for the hobbyist
coders. If you or a small team make an app, you're not exactly going to
survive off donations alone (my ~5500 user Chrome app has had all of two
donations :| ).

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rosstamicah
While this article definitely was geared more toward the
individual/hobbyist/"solving a problem" reader, its great to see a broader
discussion of open source economics open up. For those individuals, which (if
any) OS marketplaces do you guys prefer to use, or would you rather put
something out on your own?

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mtgred
OpenERP's business model seems to work well. They have been growing 100% per
year for the last 4 years.

<http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/71059.html>

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rl1987
Google Summer Of Code!

