Profiting from Open Source Software

Posted by michael on Tuesday December 7, 2004 @06:15AM from the step-2-is-always-the-problem dept.

Secret Santa writes "Alex Salkever has written an inspiring and Linux-friendly piece about Martin Roesch -- how he went from writing open-source software to building a multimillion dollar company. Excerpt: 'Sourcefire is one of a growing number of small software players that have built new businesses around open-source code. Their business models contain various mixes of proprietary and open-source software components and span the software gamut, from other security companies such as Tripwire to database outfits such as MySQL and desktop-computing offerings like Xandros. Most are still small, with revenues well under $50 million.'"

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Isn't that the dream? by YetAnotherName · 2004-12-07 06:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

Make a package that everyone loves (starting as open source), then either get bought up by some company for your copious skills at making such a well-loved package, or making a proprietary add-on ... it's something I've failed doing time and time again. I'm glad to see that it does indeed work from time to time, else we might see fewer and fewer contributions to open source than we do.