1) You can bill up-front for major features development. If someone wants a major feature they can may for it. This reduces the risk of software development because much more of the development is being paid for up front. However the revenue doesn't scale and it's subject to boom/bust problems. This being said it's a great strategy to mitigate financial risk in product development.
2) You can find areas where #1 doesn't work and come up with some sort of customer agreement that does scale. The nice thing is that if that area really doesn't work (updates to payroll for example) for reasons inherent here, then you won't have someone else release something like it fully on an open source model and have to compete with free.
So the way I look at it is that I get some things for free (financing for development), my customers get some things for free(software, upgrades on main packages), and this then creates a market for services I can charge more for because the overall package is less expensive.
ERP is huge business but the thing about it is that going with an open source approach brings benefits to smaller businesses that are currently reserved for huge businesses. A multi-pronged approach to revenue here (consulting, subscriptions, support contracts), allows you to take advantage of network effects between these things, cut risk, and still maintain general scalability of revenues.
If others want to do this with LedgerSMB I would generally advise against competing with core, long-term members of the community. You are more likely to succeed if you carve out a niche for yourself in an area that's not being done or is underdeveloped (MRP would be a good example with LedgerSMB).
1) You can bill up-front for major features development. If someone wants a major feature they can may for it. This reduces the risk of software development because much more of the development is being paid for up front. However the revenue doesn't scale and it's subject to boom/bust problems. This being said it's a great strategy to mitigate financial risk in product development.
2) You can find areas where #1 doesn't work and come up with some sort of customer agreement that does scale. The nice thing is that if that area really doesn't work (updates to payroll for example) for reasons inherent here, then you won't have someone else release something like it fully on an open source model and have to compete with free.
So the way I look at it is that I get some things for free (financing for development), my customers get some things for free(software, upgrades on main packages), and this then creates a market for services I can charge more for because the overall package is less expensive.
ERP is huge business but the thing about it is that going with an open source approach brings benefits to smaller businesses that are currently reserved for huge businesses. A multi-pronged approach to revenue here (consulting, subscriptions, support contracts), allows you to take advantage of network effects between these things, cut risk, and still maintain general scalability of revenues.
If others want to do this with LedgerSMB I would generally advise against competing with core, long-term members of the community. You are more likely to succeed if you carve out a niche for yourself in an area that's not being done or is underdeveloped (MRP would be a good example with LedgerSMB).