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Making Money Using Open Source Software?
GamblerZG asks: "As many of us probably know, convincing people to run Free Software can sometimes be a tedious task. However, there are a lot of factors that help us in that regard, and, perhaps, the biggest of them is a simple truth: Free Software is free. It's hard to argue with such statement. I know it, because I faced it today, trying to convince my fellow co-worker that it is possible to profit by writing GNU-licensed code. 'How company can make money, if its products are available for free?' That was a valid question indeed, and I could not find any simple answers to respond with. That makes me wonder, whether there are articles on the Internet, which explain and analyze how Open Source business models work? Do you know any ways to prove that such models can be profitable?" It can be done, you can check out a recent interview with an Open Source Entrepreneur on NewsForge for some hints. What other ideas and business plans do you think would be a good match for a business with an Open Source core?
See www.redhat.com, see www.sendmail.com, and so on and so forth. These people sell opensource product support, and make money doing it. This doesn't require paying some "analyst" $50k+ to write you a white paper on how to make money.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Yeah, but can anybody spot the other problem?
"How can a company make money if its products were available for free?"
The if...were is a hypothetical subjunctive; the writer is making a statement contrary to fact. The company's products are not available for free; the case is being postulated where they are.
Lots more details in Wikipedia, of course.
(No, I'm not a card-carrying pedant. It's made out of plastic.)
Using Google search terms "make money using open source", I came up with the following:
-101 Ways to Make Money off Open Source
-How to make money with Open Source Software
-Making an open source living
-eWeek:How to Make Money Off Open Source
I am not intending to be snitty in suggesting that you search Google; there were tons of other seemingly-good resources contained within it, and it might just be a case of different search terms. You might be able to team the information gained there with the advice of people here.
Also, if you can gain access to the class papers from the Boston Embedded Systems conference, particularly those from Bill Gatliff in 2003, there were tons of developers there who lectured on this very thing, citing examples and explaining the ins and outs of open-source licensing. I thought Bill Gatliff did an excellent job, and you may be able to contact him through his website for some resources.
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"We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms."