
How to Build Sustainable Open Source Software Projects - mwcampbell
https://www.aaronstannard.com/sustainable-open-source-software/
======
eesmith
If I understand correctly, they make their money from services and proprietary
tools built on their open core.

In other words, those efforts subsidize the open source software development,
and by implication, non-open source is more likely to be revenue generating.

My overall impression is that OSS should be seen as marketing?

> customers, OSS consumers, get something for free

It is also possible to sell, for money, software under an open source license,
and not simply give it away at no cost.

> Sustainable open source projects are ones that spawn sustainable businesses.

That is not true. A sustainable open source project can be funded by long-term
government funding, research grants, and the like. Eg,
[https://casa.nrao.edu/](https://casa.nrao.edu/) for radio astronomy has been
around for at least 30 years
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIPS++](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIPS++)
) as an open source project.

Another sustainable open source project is one which reduces costs for one
business, even if it's not possible to spawn sustainable businesses with it.

Eg,

> Google doesn’t earn any money from supporting Protocol Buffers, but they get
> a lot of recognition and access to developers doing cool stuff via their OSS
> engagement. In their case that OSS project is an indirect part of their
> business,

If PB saves Google 1% of power use and 0.05% of programming time, then that's
a big savings.

