Asking how you could “Monetize Open-Source Software” is essentially asking how you could monetize a useful but mainly social activity which produces no physical product. I’m not sure it’s possible, and if you find something, it’s not necessarily related to the social activity, or it may actually be harmful to it.
This is because free software is not a business model. Free software is an ethical stance, around which any number of business models may conceivably be constructed.
> This is because free software is not a business model. Free software is an ethical stance
Very true. And I like encouraging a world where people can make a living serving by their values instead of sacrificing them. I view this topic as "how can I earn money in spite of giving away my software", not "by giving it away".
Agreed, with a caveat. Many big projects have multiple components. A company may make a strategic decision to open source one (or more) component explicitly to use it as a marketing strategy.
A startup side project I'm working on is going to do this. We're hoping that by providing something useful to other dev teams, we will raise the profile for the company that's giving the tech away.
If we can earn a good reputation for our tech, we hope that will translate to more signups for the company's product, which uses the tech.
I don’t think majority of people open source software because of ethics.
A lot of it is just social pressure and societal norms.
It always looked to me strange that excellent software requiring years of work is made available free, also maintained over years, also with service provided by answering questions in GitHub and forums.
This is because free software is not a business model. Free software is an ethical stance, around which any number of business models may conceivably be constructed.