
Is it possible to make money from open source? - dreemteem
http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/open-source-business/in-depth/index.cfm?articleid=2742
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richardw
It is possible, but it takes some serious thinking.

A couple approaches:

1) Support an open source project because it reduces the competition's
advantages. E.g. IBM supporting Linux to reduce MS' advantages. If you're a
startup looking to fight somebody big, you can use OSS as a tactic to level
the playing field somewhat.

2) Break up your offering into proprietary and open parts. The former should
align with your (hopefully unique) strengths, or maybe legally protected
methods, the latter should be code that compliments it but is not
strategically important. The open source aspect gets you attention, users and
hopefully code contributions. The proprietary aspect you sell to customers who
are happy to pay for e.g. convenience, speed, quality, user interface,
attention to detail. An example is Apple supporting various non-core open
source projects, like Webkit or FreeBSD, that they build on top of.

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dasil003
This article seems to stem from the ridiculous premise that _the_ open source
question is whether a software company should take their core product and
simply open source it. It's no wonder a lot of software companies balk at the
thought. It's ridiculous.

The issue of open source is about value, not cash. With open source a lot more
value is created because more users and more developers means better quality.
This extra value can translate into a winning scenario for a software company
open sourcing some of their components, because they get more robust software
essentially for free.

The trick is to release components that have broad use cases, ie. the stuff
that's ripe for commodification anyway. Thinking that stuff gives you a
competitive advantage is fool-hardy because by definition, there are always
going to be more developers outside your organization than in it, so anything
that's broadly useful is going to be done better by open source than your
company will be able to manage, so why not proactively take control of the
situation and build your own open source community.

But there's no value in releasing your own secret sauce. Companies like Google
and Facebook inherently understand that which is why they release things like
GWT and Cassandra without a second thought. Yes it's serious software that
contributes to their competitive advantage, but it doesn't give anybody a jump
start on eating their lunch.

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patio11
I got paid to work on OSS (OpenId4Java) this month by the day job. OSS largely
makes my closed source application possible, since the majority of my
toolchain is OSS and leveraging it makes it possible for me to develop new
features much, much faster than I could myself.

In terms of actually making money through _writing_ OSS, I've gotten
significant returns out of writing A/Bingo. Mostly that has been through
direct use of the program, but it has also been one of my best strategies ever
for getting links, and I suppose if I wanted to do consulting the trickle of
people saying "Would you be interested in consulting on ...?" would have
value, too.

P.S: From the article: "Support, by the way, is a horrible business." Ye gods,
yes. Who _wants_ to get into this, honestly?

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woid
Working pretty hard on my open-source projects at <http://binaryage.com>.

Until today I've got $12 in contributions via addons.mozilla.com :-) But I'm
optimistic I hope someday I will be able to do it full time and possibly make
living from it. But it seems I have a long journey ahead, for the meantime I
had to stick with freelance/client work ...

Any ideas what should I focus at highly appreciated! Your experience may help
me move faster. Thanks.

~~~
WA
Beautiful webpage you've got there :)

What might work for open-source: 1\. Once you have a couple users, announce
new features that are requested by a lot of your users and tell them:"It takes
me X hours to work on that, once I got donations worth Y $, I start developing
that feature".

2\. Distribute two builds: One build with new features that is commercial and
another (older) build that is open-source, but doesn't have the newest
features. The open-source build could be somewhat like 6-12 months behind the
commercial release.

~~~
tjr
Or possibly don't offer an open source build at all. If someone wants an
executable, they pay for a distribution of it, while they can get the source
code for free.

This opens the door to the possibility of someone else making builds and
distributing them for free (legally), but there may be something to be said
for you being the original source of the software, rather than a third-party.
If you can market your website as _the_ place to get the software, maybe
enough people won't bother looking for other sources anyway.

EDIT: ...depending on who your market is, of course. If I found a website
distributing software as described, I would first look for a free build of it
somewhere else, figuring that it probably exists. Failing that, I would
probably download the source code and spend a small amount of time trying to
make it build. If I can get it built in short order, then great. If not, then
I'd probably buy the "official" build, depending on the cost and how much I
want the software. (It might be more cost efficient for me to keep trying to
get the build to work, vs. pay a high distribution fee.)

But I am not the average computer user. Neither are most people who read this
website. Most computer users have little or no concept of what open source is,
no capacity for building software from source, and, I suspect, less savvy when
it comes to finding a build from a third party. So if your software's target
userbase is not computer nerds, then charging a distribution fee for a build
may be more feasible... and not unjust, either, as you are truly providing a
service to such people, compared to just offering source code, anyway, which,
in theory they _could_ learn how to build, or _could_ pay another programmer
to build for them.

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pchristensen
I always found this to be a silly question - RedHat, MySQL and others have
proven this. The meaningful question is "How can you make an acceptable amount
from open source to make it worth the opportunity cost of not selling
software?"

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ZeroGravitas
The answer to that question is "yes", but that's not the question they ask in
the column.

They continually ask about how to sell software after making it open source,
which is (or at least should be) stupid by definition, but some people are too
steeped in the old ways to understand how crazy that sounds and start asking
the real question:

"If it won't let me make money by selling software, then how will it let me
make money?"

Who was it that said the easiest way to make money from open source is to use
it? (One of the MySQL guys I think)

PS why is there _" a session entitled, "Is Open Source Old News?" at the
Microsoft PDC (Professional Developers Conference)"_ The mixed messages on
Open Source from Microsoft continue.

~~~
rbanffy
"PS why is there " a session entitled, "Is Open Source Old News?" at the
Microsoft PDC (Professional Developers Conference)" The mixed messages on Open
Source from Microsoft continue."

Is this a rhetorical question?

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c00p3r
What would you expect from microsoft-backed tabloid? Of course, they never
heard about Redhat or MySQL (before they were brought by Sun).

