
The Economics of Open-Source - pytrin
http://www.sitepoint.com/not-your-grandfathers-open-source/
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jdmitch
Some areas do lend themselves to the two-tier system more than others, so I am
not sure open-source will continue to gain significant market through tiered
payment levels. It works for enterprise offerings but not all open-source
projects lend themselves to enterprise.

I think its almost more significant that in a post-piracy age (maybe we're not
quite there yet), people seem to be increasingly willing to pay for something
when they don't have to. I think open source may start to gain traction on a
pay-what-you-want payment model, in the way that some musicians have.

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icebraining
The author forgot a different model: a bunch of small/medium companies work
together to build a larger project, with hundreds of other companies and
individuals making smaller contributions.

Our business is completely based on OpenERP, which is an AGPLv3 licensed web
ERP created by a Belgium company (OpenERP SA) and with modules built and
contributed by dozens of partners.

It works for us, since we get a free ERP we can build upon; it works for them,
since they get contributions and support contracts from our larger clients.
Win-win.

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programminggeek
There is always going to be money in hosting/support/continued development of
both open source and proprietary software. Dual license or not, people will
pay money for these things.

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rdudekul
"Using a dual-license model, with commercial licensing supporting the
development of both community and enterprise versions. It’s a model that
companies such as Redhat and MySQL used very effectively in building billion
dollar businesses and enterprise grade products."

The statement seems true for infrastructure oriented open source projects
(MongoDB etc.). For software applications that business users use, does a
dual-license model hold true? I personally doubt it.

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mooreds
I think the dual license model would have some revenue, because businesses are
willing to pay money to make money.

I say this as someone who paid for an open source developer to enhance a
project.

