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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.

11 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. One interesting thing by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One thing I noticed about that article when reading it yesterday was that only two of those business models actually include writing open source code. This fits with my thoughts that there's plenty of money to be made from open source, but not necessarily from creating open source.

    1. Re:One interesting thing by fbrain · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My company implements open source solutions for a small fee, and when asked to install some OSS we always donate a percentage of the fee towards the projects we use. It would be great if everyone 'played nice' but I can't see that happening.

      --
      Avontech | Play dirty! They started it!
    2. Re:One interesting thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Indeed you are correct. Amazon and Google are but two testaments to the idea of using open source for business purposes, and neither is exactly a "software" company.

  2. Data Strategy? by Mr.+Sketch · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It was a nice read, but I was curious about one additional option, the 'Data Strategy'. This is specific to games where you may develop the engine using open source tools and release the engine as open source, but charge for all your data files the engine uses for your particular game. Or has this just not been proven as being a viable model?

    --
    Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
    1. Re:Data Strategy? by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I think that's a version of the optimization strategy.

      The problem with any strategy that involves giving away code and making money on something else is that there's a first-mover disadvantage. You're better off waiting for someone else to give away a game engine and then building games based on it. (Although I could be wrong, considering how little I know about business.)

  3. Sleepycat license question by 16K+Ram+Pack · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Does anyone have any more details on this?

    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?

  4. Re:Missing option: consumer desktop business model by DR+SoB · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes, with a few simple steps:

    1. IBM dumps tons of money into marketing Linux (any distro..)

    2. IBM upgrades OO..

    3. IBM allows blatant pirating of OS, and offer's free (or next to free) training. Pirates = Free training..

    4. IBM reduces price of x desktop model that comes with Linux.

    5. IBM sell's business licenses because now it's desktop version is well known to market/consumers/PHB's..

    6. Profit!

    --
    Mod +5 Drunk
  5. Re:Missing option: consumer desktop business model by pavon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't think there is much money in developing a Free home desktop OS. There is money in packaging and supporting it, and you can certainly subsidize some development using that money. But more importantly, there is money in the business desktop, and if you look at the current state of affairs, the business desktop and the home desktop are extremely simular. Furthermore, most people aren't confortable switching to a new system once they have learned windows, but having used open source software at work will remove those concerns (assuming it was a good experiance :). So I really don't think there will be much of any demand for the home desktop until OSS becomes more prevelent in the workplace anyway.

    In other words, not having a viable business model for the home desktop is not important, because it will ride on the coat-tails of the business desktop.

  6. software dumping by lkcl · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Contributing software to the open source community alone was not sufficient to save the successor to the Netscape browser."

    very very interesting. recently i just ran Microsoft Office under Crossover-Office (Wine with codeweavers improvements) and on a pentium 400 with 128mb of RAM it took 5 seconds to load a word document.

    the SAME document took OVER A MINUTE to load with OpenOffice.

    open source software does not automatically mean better.

    as a community we are almost entirely dependent on the goodwill of large corporate sponsors to back their own aims, shoring up linux and its applications in areas suited to them.

  7. OSS Support company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    My company (www.idreus.com) supports OSS projects and most everything we sell and support is OSS based. Even down to the firewall/vpn appliances from snapgear based on uclinux. We have and will continue to donate to the projects we make money off of.

  8. Re:Mozilla is a failure? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Mozilla can be considered a failure because it lost the browser wars.