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Seven Open Source Business Strategies

Posted by Hemos on from the building-an-economic-future dept.

Openstandards.net writes "One of /. posters' favorite discussions is the value of open source as a business model. OSDN has an article on IT Manager's Journal that highlights seven business strategies for open source. " Slashdot and ITMJ are both owned by OSDN.

2 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sleepycat license question by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 4, Informative

    Like if I submit a fix/enchancement to MySQL in the GPL version, can they as the 'owners' put that in their commercial license which their customers can release without the source code?

    If you (foolishly) assign the copyright on your code to them, then they can do whatever they want. If you keep copyright to your patch, they can only use it under the license you have chosen.

  2. Cygnus by Henrik+S.+Hansen · · Score: 5, Informative
    Cygnus was actually the very first company to deal exclusively in Free Software (back then the term 'Open Source' was not yet coined). The company's founder, Michael Tiemann actually got the idea from the GNU Manifesto, which outlines ways to make money from Free Software.

    Cygnus primarily provided support, but I think they also did some development. Maybe someone can elaborate?

    In my mind, Cygnus is a good example of how a small company can survive on just dealing in Free Software. Many people need support, or perhaps need custom-made changes to Free Software.

    AFAIK, Cygnus is now part of Red Hat, and Michael Tiemann is CTO of Red Hat.