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Earning Money with Open Source Software?
An anonymous reader writes
"I've been working on a financial application which I've decided to release to the public. I want to make some money from the application, though I certainly don't expect to become a millionaire. The problem is that I'd like nothing better than to open-source it. There are many aspects of the application that I don't have time to refine, and other developers could definitely improve upon my work. However, I don't know how I earn money from something once I've made it open source. How have you dealt with trying to turn a reasonable profit on your work while remaining open-sourced?"
FSF view on selling software
Also: Software as a service
Finally, there is also consultancy for your own project. You need help installing it? You want a feature? Hand over the cash!
No, I haven't done it. Mainly because I'd rather not be my own boss. The payoff is high, but so are the risks. I'd rather be a wage-slave and let my boss bear the risks.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I think that OSS doesn't make money as software for an individual, but it allows him or her to increase his or her visibility.
This is not a signature.
use the redhat model.
Or
Sell changes. Charge for any custom features.
Learn from the ones that have succeeded, such as mysql or zend.
I'd suggest you start a company, as you are more likely to be taken seriously by possible clients. And become 'the' company to go for support, customization, etc.
There must be products who have succeeded as a one man show but honestly I can't think of any.
Also, drop the 'I don't have time to refine' attitude. If you want to make money, you have time to do whatever your clients require, unless you just feel it's wrong for your product and refuse to do it altogether.
In short, if you really want to make money, your priorities have to be the ones of your clients', unless you are confident that what you feel like doing today is what someone else will feel like buying tomorrow.
By the way, is anyone using it already?
Since it's open source there is no real point in charging for the software, but you could charge for support.
If you want to make money on it and you're the only person who worked on it, don't make it open source. Just release it for free and take donations but don't release the source. Open source implies you're going to let other people work on your code and that doesn't sound like what you want to do. Sounds like you'd just be abusing the overused term "Open Source" just because it's free and get all pissed when people e-mail you problems with your code that need to be fixed.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
For whatever reason, people often assume a false dichotomy between open sourcing code and making money. This isn't the case. A simple example of this is the ability to donate to any project on sourceforge. So a simple effortless option is to sign on to SourceForge, register your project and make yourself the sole dev. Then you just need to sit back and wait for all those donations to roll in!
Likely source of income? Not really.
So let me tell you something that happened to me. I had, in one of my classes, built an interface to GOCR (not Jack Black's band but the Gnu Optical Character Recognition project). This was a while ago. It was in C and it was shitty. I mean really shitty. I didn't even open source it. The teacher liked it though, maybe she still uses it, I don't know. Whoop de doo, right? I made a GUI to a command line tool.
Fast forward 2 years. I'm out of college and it's a bad market for developers. I show up for an interview with a company I had no idea was even into software. I show up in khakis and a button down shirt. Everyone else is in double breasted suits. I figure I'm screwed. But when I get into the interview, we started talking about open source and--wouldn't you know it--GOCR! The woman who interviewed me had used it on a project and started complaining about the command line. So I told her what I had done and talked about the algorithms and how it recognizes characters. I told her why my interface was so crappy. I got the job and I've been working there three years--they even allow me to do crazy research stuff at work!
Did I directly make money working on open source? No. But I think I got the job just on that conversation. I kinda wished I had checked in that interface as I'm sure it's lost somewhere on the university network now. What if she had actually used it?
I suggest you open source it, work with others to make it better, give it time to propagate. Then submit your resume to any place you want and list it on there. If you've made the Firefox of financial apps or prove you really understand how to design financial software, there's a lot of places you could go.
My work here is dung.
In addition to the "software as a service" and "sell support" models, you could have two versions. One is open-source, the other closed source but more feature rich.
Projects like VirtualBox do this sort of thing.
From my experience, the best means of leveraging Open Source Software would be using the Saas model. Usinng the Saas model there often are additional opportunities for income such as advertising or other tie ins.
The alternative approach seems to be in providing extended support serivces for the software as does Redhat.
Sell T-shirts and mugs.
Oh wait, that's musicians.
If you don't have time, or you're just too lazy, to continue to add updates, and you want to make a quick buck off of it, don't OS it. It's that simple. OSS companies tend to sell support, and possibly custom-tailored upgrades.
If you think it'll be mildly popular, and you really want to OS it, throw up a paypal donation link. You may not get as much, but you'll be staying true to your scruples.
Your choice.
Easy! Just follow the ESR method:
1) Wish *really hard* that some way exists.
2) Compare proprietary software to the Holocaust.
3) Insist that it's feasible to subsist on money from writing software if you don't have a mortgage or kids and camp/forage at MIT.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
just add some code that will transfer a few points of a cent from each users account to your own.... don't worry no one will actually look at the source anyways...
You capitalist pig! FOSS should cost nothing and let programmers earn next to nothing, thats what we all want!
If you don't have a way of making money off the software now, you're not going to have one just because you open-source it.
Get people to use the software (open or not). Find out if they need/want modifications or support (and are willing to pay for it).
THEN (and ONLY at that point) can you start making money off open-source software.
There are a lot of podcasts on making money with open source here:
http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/index.html
You may need to look around a little.
I have made money indirectly from open source. Basically I through it out there and some people picked it up. When they needed other projects worked on I was contacted.
Documentation is more important than code I can tell you that much. Installation documentation, user documentation and most importantly programmer documentation.
and then provide the basic-feature part of the service with ad-supported revenue while charging for custom in-house solutions. After making in-house solutions and getting paid for them, release the software open source. They paid you to write the solutions -- not to own them. This way the project goals will be set by customers (and necessity is the mother of invention) and at the same time the software will remain available to those who want to tweak it.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I can't tell from TFA whether the "financial application" is a server or desktop application. Assuming it is a desktop application then I would point out that open source code does not have to mean open binaries.
Try to separate your markets. If you give it free to people who would not buy it anyway, then your increase your visibility and your network effect. You might also get some patches back.
So put the source code online, maybe even try to get it in the Linux distributions for more visibility.
However, charge for the Windows binaries/installer. Most Windows users will pay $20 rather than have to figure out how to compile it. If they do compile it anyway then their time is worth less than $20 so they could not have afforded it anyway.
My little Linux and tech blog
If you're open sourcing a database or a telephony system that has wide appeal - sure you can make money on consulting. But if your software lacks wide appeal or is in a very specific niche market then no one will pay you to extend it. It may be useful as an example of your work if you're a consultant, but that's about it.
I want to make some money from the application, though I
certainly don't expect to become a millionaire. The problem is that
I'd like nothing better than to open-source it. There are many
aspects of the application that I don't have time to refine, and
other developers could definitely improve upon my work.
Wow, blatant self-contradiction within three sentences! If the application
makes you money, then by definition, you can afford some time to work on it.
If you know enough to write a financial application shouldn't you know how to earn money?
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
I'm the author of LiarLiar, an open source Voice Stress detector. Over the years, I've had several offers from various individuals and companies to further develop or improve upon the software. If you develop software that has enough demand, you may be able to offer support services for your software. Don't expect to get rich, or even be able to make a living for that matter.
The most important thing to keep in mind is, make sure you have a backup source of income. Either a job or something else, as it is unlikely that you will be able to make enough supporting an open source project, unless it becomes very popular.
We've done quite well with open sourcing our antispam product http://firetrust.com/en/products/oss/mailwasher-server by giving away the main product and selling a value added service on top of it - this being an enhanced spam filter service we run.
I think the giving away something for free and selling a few enhancements is probably the easiest way to make money, much more so than consulting and support which directly takes up your time.
Nick
Wether your software is OSS or not hardly matters anything - unless it's a small desktop app or something. Marketing otoh is key. If your software is ready for market and you have a working developement pipeline up and running be sure to prepare professional branding of your software and it's future community before hand. All successfull OSS projects have solid marketing, good looking websites and are generally attractive to work with and give money to. I'd also not underestimate donations and sponsorships.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I'm by no means a rich person, but I've landed my career [ideal job] because the people who hired me were already avid users of the software I give out for free.
Basically, it works along the lines of market. If what you're doing is useful, well done, and people need it, you'll be rewarded. With money, praise, attention, a job, who knows. If what you're doing is not useful (e.g. what 99% of script monkey developers do) you'll scrape by and be largely unrewarded.
Just because you can make something compile and tarball it up doesn't mean you're doing something useful. You need to identify a know deficit and provide a solution.
One of the more annoying things that OSS folk tend to do is ship out some untested 0.01alphabetaomgbbq release, then start whoring themselves out. Worry more about the quality of what you're doing, rather than the attention it's getting. If it's truly well done and useful the word will spread.
As someone who hasn't applied for a job since college, I can definitely say this strategy has potential.
A lot of developers believe that somehow they are entitled to money just because they're good-hearted enough to release their software as FOSS. I'm not saying this is necessarily you, but I hold a strong view that if you serve it, they will come. Write software that does exactly what people expect it to with a UI that they can understand. Listen to (read?) support requests and respond to even the most stupid questions in a way that is tactful and informative. If you do a good job and show a genuine commitment to your project, people will donate.
Also, and I can't stress this enough, be VERY careful about asking for donations. If you nag people to death about it then you won't ever get a cent. Nagging, at least in my experience, is usually defined as a reminder to donate when your software is started or closed, or a prominent animated/garish button on your website.
From my own FOSS project's Donations page:
--DanAlso, drop the 'But they'll send me to Federal pound me in the ass prison' attitude.
My work here is dung.
You sell OSS the same way you sell to anyone else: you sell to people who want to buy because they value what you offer.
There's not necessarily a lot of overlap between people who need financial software and people who know how to build and validate software that they downloaded from the net. Those people value software that works out-of-the-box. Give it to them and charge them for it. There's also not a lot of overlap between people who treat their money as if it were important and people who entrust their financial data to an unknown app from a provider they can't identify. So be the known, trusted source for a known, documented app and charge people for it.
Be sure to make it possible for people to do what you want them to do. If you're going to make it open source with the idea that others will pick it up and make improvements, thoroughly document what's there, how to build it, how to give changes back, how those changes will be moderated, what you'll do when two people submit conflicting changes, and all of the other stuff that's required for an ongoing open source project to which people will contribute.
By the way, there's a lot of open source out there, but not nearly as many open source developers. If you've got an app in which you yourself are no longer interested, you don't necessarily have the next million-developer piece of software sitting on your disk. No disrespect intended; I'm just saying that you may want to do a reality check before you get too far into this.
There are many aspects of the application that I don't have time to refine
...
However, I don't know how I earn money from something once I've made it open source.
Short answer: You don't.
Longer answer - You've written a pair of contradictory statements there. Making money from FOSS requires you to stop thinking of the program (whether executable or source) as a final product to sell.
You need to view the program as a hook. People use it and either want support or more features, and they pay you for exactly that. However, you've already stated that you don't have the time to further refine the program, which also implies you don't have time to do support for the program. Thus, you will not make money selling your program if you release it as FOSS (and unless you have something really quite impressive, you won't make money on it in a closed version, either.
Sad but true. If you do FOSS, do it for the love of doing it, because it almost certainly won't bring you any profit.
How the heck is this news? This would be a question for a forum. Not the main page of slashdot.
Linux is like a teepee. It has no windows, no gates, and there's an Apache inside.
Here's how I did it.
Once upon a time I was a completely unknown, but reasonably competent, software developer. I worked for a big mainframe maker. The software I worked on was proprietery and completely invisible.
Many suspected mainframes were all but history. I decided to learn to write for a different platform: PC, Unix. So, I bought a PC, taught myself C/C++. Now what? There was a open source project whose software I used. I felt it needed a big feature. The author wasn't interested in doing it, but was very helpful in getting me started on interfacing with it. I ended up writing a big plugin for it.
That piece of work gave me some personal visibility and credibility in the open source community, and a "portfolio". When the layoffs happened, because of my work on the project, I knew some folks at a shrinkwrap software company. My "portfolio", a demonstrated ability, got me a job with the shrinkwrap company. --- My old employer, the mainframe maker, spiraled down the bowl into oblivion.
The point of the story is that the software I wrote in the FOSS model didn't make any money for me, but it gave me, an introvert with little public persona, nor desire to have one, visibility and credibility to those who would hire me.
That may work for you too.
This is actually exactly what I was going to suggest. People running Linux are often either programmers themselves or interested in free/open source software. People running Mac OS and Windows, however, are obviously willing to trade money for the convenience of a point-and-click installer.
There's another option depending on how well you've defined a core/UI split--open-source the core engine, but charge for the GUI (or possibly for a web interface).
same here. when I was taking the CCNA classes, I talked to everyone. they were a bunch of noobs really, so everyone was surprised when I talked about my adventures with Linux and networking. Couple of months later, I was setting up a rural WISP and sold support to them for 2 years. Now I support 2 more WISPs and I get enough money, not enough to live of course, but more than enough to buy gadgets and such. If I needed the money, I'm sure I could get more with a little creativity.
There are three core reasons to open-source -
* to solicit improvements (see Linux)
* to facilitate adoption (through implementation transparency, see OpenVPN and TrueCrypt)
* for personal reasons (to brag or to support political agenda, see libevent or IO language)
These can be mixed and matched, but it typically helps to understand WHY you are open-sourcing. That's a first step.
Second step, if you want to make some $, is determining (funny enough) your business model. You can make money off the open-source either via the support or via dual-licensing.
Support model does not really scale, because in order to earn twice the money, you have put a double effort. It is also more of a sales task, which you may or may not have an inclination or an ability to so.
Dual-licensing *is* a way to go, but it implies that the code is non-trivial, solid and mature. Otherwise it does not make any sense for a 3rf party to become dependent on something that's not quite ready with an uncertain future. This automatically implies that you should not be open-sourcing the code that needs work.
Keep in mind that it's often possible to find someone willing to purchase the project as is from you. Depending on the arrangement you may also retain a right to influence further development of the product and/or land a mid-term contract gig.
2c
3.243F6A8885A308D313
So you've developed crappy software, you don't want to put the effort into making it good, but you still think people will pay you money?
You are Bill Gates, and I claim my five dollars.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Wayne Gould & Pappocom.
"A retired Hong Kong judge who spent several years programming a puzzle he couldn't live without".
He waltzed into a newspaper office with just his laptop, and being at the right place at the right time, single handedly boosted Sudoku.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Or is it at the point where it's essentially a "nice idea" that's been taken to about typical shareware quality? Something that's not even close to standing on its own as a traditional boxed product, revenue generator without a lot more development work put in by a lot more people?... People that the goal is to get for free from the Open Source movement rather than actually hire?
Back during the dotcom days, I'd get approached daily by someone new from sales or marketting within the large multi-national I was at. They heard I was a good coder and they wanted to know if I'd be willing to join their start up as the lead coder.
I'd check their business model. They always planned the same thing: Who's paying for this? "We'll get VC interest." OK, what idea do you have? "We'll find someone with a cool idea and fund it with that VC money." So you're planning on getting VCs to fund you, to do the VCs' job, with you then taking the millions dotcoms are supposed to make their owners? I don't see this working. At that point, I always politely declined.
Just as I questioned their entitlement to make money and, on a less manipulative level, their simply having deluded themselves... I'd question anyone who doesn't really have a fully featured product, that's not at a point where it can make money on its own, without needing Open Source devs to take it to the next level for them - work they won't pay for because it's "open source" but they'd still like a reasonable profit from for themselves.
I think we covered this in detail here:
What is the Best Way to Start a Paid GPL Project?
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/05/1756217
Generally, making "writing code that you give away" your life's work is generally a bad way to go about things if "steady paycheck" is what you desire (unless you're working for someone who's already figured out the business model).
If you are interested in making a profit, follow the advice of other posters here and figure out what people WILL pay for first, and then avoid giving whatever that is away.
It's virtually certain you will not make a living from free software.
Our business model is to have a core GPL'd product that is solid, but geared for sysadmins and technical people. We then have a more user-friendly and spiffy product layered around it that is traditional proprietary software (although we do ship with source which is somewhat unusual.
Hard-core techies or FOSS-only people are happy with the GPL'd product, and others buy the commercial product. The GPL'd product is also a good hook and marketing vehicle, as well as a proving-ground for new ideas, scalability enhancements, etc.
The trick is to get paid, or enter a contract to be paid, before you do the work. People need some functionality, and you write it for a price. As a byproduct, you release the code as free software. It gets easier over time, as you and your code gains reputation.
I have made a living that way for the last 12 years.
It is a change of mindset, you get paid for your work, not for your code, just like if you were an ordinary wage slave. The difference is that since your code is free, you are too, you won't lose it when switching client.
Similar story for me, i publish a number of tools which people in my field use... As a consequence, for the last few technical interviews i've been to the guy interviewing me has heard of or even used one or more of my tools, and is often familiar with the websites i run or contributed to that publish such tools.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Same thing happened to me. I had no commerical experience. The only reason I got hired was because I had an open source project that proved I could do the job.
There's a lot of insightful information here already, so I'll just add a bit and reinforce some... There's nothing in the GPL (any version) that says you can't charge for your software. Whether people will pay is another story, since they don't have to. But, many people don't want to compile or jump through hoops installing, or even downloading the software in the first place. So, one way to start is to just offer the disks for sale. Almost anybody will pop $5 for a pre-burned disk with a reliable install routine on it. Since CDs cost about 25 cents apiece, and take about 5 minutes to burn, and cost about 50 cents to ship, you're still $4.25 up not counting your labor. If you find you're selling a lot of them, you can always hire a fulfillment service. That'll drop your per-unit sales profits a bit, but it takes workload off you so all you're doing is collecting checks. Adding the project to Sourceforge is a good way to get help, if you haven't the time, inclination, or wherewithal to put the finishing touches on it. There's no money in that, but it improves the product and its uptake. Support is a good way to make money, but if you don't have the time or resources for that, then you may not want to put it out there at all. Besides, outside of corporate users, paying for support sounds like crime to most people
...we're doing something similar and assuming you have done something cool, perhaps there is room for co-operation? owonder.com/contact
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Fair Use wizard http://www.fairusewizard.com/ makes some money and that is completely OSS. You can find guys that have recompiled the OSS release but it's always behind the main release and has no support.
I buy it on a regular basis, and recommend it to clients and friends.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Unless your project becomes as popular as the major open source projects like MySQL, PHP, SugarCRM, (millions of downloads) you won't make much, if any on "support services".
I currently work for a open source software company that is the only one of its kind in the world, we had about 50,000-75,000 downloads in its first 12 months of being open source, but the amount of revenue from support would barely pay a single employees salary. Instead this is what we hear everyday:
"You have a manual right? Great, we will try that first then."
Often after a few days they call back and say:
"Your manual doesn't go into enough detail, don't you have a better one? No?! Well we don't want to buy support if you manual can't help us!"
Of course we find customers usually say the manual doesn't go into enough detail when they haven't actually read it, because once we direct them to a specific page/section they happily thank us and hang up the phone. Open source has done a GREAT job of making people think "Its 100% FREE", which brings out the people who don't want to spend a dime on anything. Its hilarious how many phone calls we get to a 1-800 number that go like this:
Them: "Hi there, your software is free right?"
Us: "Yes, it sure is!"
Them: "Great, can you help us install it?"
Us: "Sure, we would love to, do you current have a support package with us?"
Them: "No, you said it was free though?"
Us: "The software is free, however we charge for support"
Them: "Oh, well I want free software. Thanks, bye!"
The problem with making money on support services is that you need software that the best manual in the world isn't really going to help people at all. If thats not the case, then trying to sell support services is admitting that your manual is terrible or your software is too difficult to use. You will only be selling support to people who:
a) Don't have any time and want to be up and running ASAP, which means you do everything for them.
b) Too lazy to read the manual anyways.
c) Broke something, and need it running again ASAP.
Unfortunately without having a huge user base there just aren't enough of these people. Not to mention that their is often a inverse relation between improving your softwares usability/manual and your bottom line.
Then to top it all off, IF you do get to a point where a one man show can make a living off support services, you never have time to improve your product because you are always busy with customers. Its virtually a no-win situation.
Having said that, custom development is a whole different ball game. This is a great way to make money because it not only improves your product on other peoples dime, you can charge a premium for it. Often two or three times what you can for support. Its usually fairly low volume as well though.
Instead of concentrating on support services, you need to come up with a way to make several different editions of your product. Something like what MySQL/SugarCRM does, a "Community Edition", then a "Professional Edition" that adds certain important features or functionality. You then need to do whatever it takes to undermine your support services so you can build your install base as much (and as fast) as possible. Fancy installers, a GREAT manual, video tutorials, everything. You need to get people hooked on the free edition then entice them to upgrade every chance you get. Obviously its much better to have someone call to purchase the "Professional Edition" at $500 then get off the phone in 5 minutes, compared to having them pay $100 and being on the phone for 1-2hours asking questions and monopolizing your time.
Fortunately in our line of business we sell both software, and hardware that accompanies it. For us the hardware is actually what brings in the majority of the revenue and we do extremely well because of it. Without the hardware we would still be in business, but we would be struggling with the size of our current user base.
Like most things, its a n
You can earn some money with entirely Free Software, although I can't live only on this for now.
What I do is give free access to subversion tree to everyone.
But I sell login accounts which allow people to download the software in packaged form (tar+gzip, Debian, Ubuntu, RPMs) including the compiled PDF and HTML documentation (vs SGML only from subversion), for a modest amount (25 EUROS or US$, and yes I know this is definitely NOT the same).
All people who pay to download such packages are allowed to redistribute them under the terms of the GNU GPL v3. In practice, to my knowledge nobody did. It would be interesting to know why...
In addition, I sell 8x5x365 technical support contracts.
Provided this is not a full time job, I think I do pretty well, equivalent to around 1/3 to 1/2 of my full time job's salary.
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
I've been working in a software company I founded with my friends at university some eight years ago. We have created a software platform for certain industrial computation tasks and believe it could very well be used in many other applications, especially for research purposes. We have frequently spoken about open-sourcing the platform, but always faced the same question: where's the money? We get a decent income for the applications we build on the platform, but haven't been able to figure out any financial benefits on open-sourcing neither the platform nor the applications. Following the discussion here it seems that no one really has found a working solution. Selling support or custom upgrades is not what we really want to do as engineers, is it?
Hi, I own since 4 years an Open Source company called Docebo (www.docebo.com), we offer an e-learning platform developed by us but released under GPL because we don't want that the customer pay for every student and we also want that the customer own all the software, data, code and course without being "linked" to us. We are based in Italy We have as customer italian Branch of SKY Television, AON Insurance and many other companies that generally have more than 50 Milion U$ or more than 500 Employees, next challenge will be market our services worldwide. Your problem is not a "software" problem but business problem, your problem will not be develop a software but find customers, you will not be a developer but you will be a manager. More verticalized is your product more money you can do, more services you will find more business meeting you will have ...
Regards
Claudio
These comments remind me of some of the things said in another slashdot article on recognizing good programmers.
I hired a dude a couple of years ago who, like you, didn't have a lot of experience.
He did, however, have a very impressive FOSS portfolio, and could show all kinds of code he wrote in support of various projects. This involvement suggested that:
0) He cared enough, as a developer, to get involved and donate his time and effort to a project, and
1) He saw his contribution as one to the "greater good" (and not entirely for personal gain), and
2) He had the stones to put his code out there for others to review and use.
YMMV, of course--this fellow got the job, and has done quite well at it.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
I've been meaning to sit down and draft a license for my own (and others', obviously) use, that would be sort of a hybrid license. Binary (re)distribution would be prohibited, but source code could / would be freely available and (re)distributable. Businesses, people who don't want to run `make`, etc., could have an easy one-click installer downloaded for a fee; shell / compiler literate people would have the source and could work with it and continue to pass it along, but couldn't offer binary downloads, just source.
geek. lawyer.
Add a Registratin module to your code, making it expire in 15 days without a registration key (like Shareware). Then obfuscate your code. ;-)
Granted, this probably defeats the purpose of making it OSS...
That GNU.org article really only talks about distributing software for a fee. And maybe you could try that, requiring people to paypal you $10 or so before being able to download it from your site--but if your product becomes popular it will quickly show up on other sites for less money or free.
It's still a mystery to me how Mozilla pays its core programmers, other than by getting huge kick-backs from Google et al.
Sell support, professional services, training, etc.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I have open sourced several projects in various stages of completion and the way I see it you have several (not mutually exclusive) options:
1) software as a service - use sourceforge marketplace or something similar (this option I have not tried yet)
2) accept donations for your project - current yield for me in 3 years $30
3) pepper your website with ads. not very nice and may put off some users but it does generate income - current yield $64
Thats it other than creating a foundation/company and getting a sponsorship.
double penetration;
As long as you own the code for your product, I don't see why you couldn't simply try selling it as shareware until you're finished supported it, then simply release it later on as an open source project when you're ready to retire it. If you come up with any useful tricks for it in your closed-source development cycle, others could take advantage of it later on when you finally release it into the wild.
8==8 Bones 8==8
By all means, release it open source, but once you start making any sort of money from it, you are open to all sorts of liability.
This is especially true for financial applications. I hope you have an iron-clad terms of use, that releases you from any sort of legal action from the consequences of failed software.
it would suck if say bug X in your application results in Y real financial losses. As a consultant you can be held liable. As a simple programmer though, you should be in the clear.
Standard disclaimers apply, IANAL, etc, etc.
How would you make money with this as a purely closed source app? To make money as a closed source app, it has to have some polish and depth of functionality out of the box. You'll have to put it into it precisely what you say there isn't time or energy for. Implicit in making it a FOSS app is the hope that others will supply some of that time or energy but you have to trade off at least some of the personal exclusivity you could enjoy if you keep it proprietary.
If you go some sort of FOSS route then is there any data this applications depends on to run. Financial apps in many domains have to be aware of tax rates or some sort of other specific data that has to be compiled for it to be useful. Compiling that data and keeping it current is at least as big a job as writing the code. If your app is in that category, then I suggest opening the code and charging for the domain specific data it needs to be useful.
You are allowed to sell Open Source Software. BUT, you must include the source code with the distribution that you sell. And, you can't prohibit the buyer from giving away the copy which he bought. You are entitled, however, to receive upstream any changes that are made, and no one is allowed to remove your copyleft on any portions of the code that you wrote. If you worry that someone who buys your software might resell it, you can't stop that, but you can always undercut their prices. Open Source is not the same as free software. It means that the user is given the right to modify the code if they so wish - and if they re-release it, must also do so under the GPL (or LGPL, or whichever one you choose).
There are plenty of ways to earn money with FLOSS. But why would you want to? Worshipping money and sex isn't all its cracked up to be. Besides hell sucks. How about this, start a commune of FLOSS software people, and play, not work. Start a no work club - despite what the slave drivers say in Hell, its perfectly legit to not work. Besides, by writing free software and releasing it to the public (best if for no charge), you will contribute to the human condition more than just about anyway else, provided the software is not evil (and considering financial software, unless its personal stuff like GNUCash it probably is evil). You're still going to die, and only then will you make your escape. BTW, you are assuredly going to heaven, because you cant be sent to hell, bcause ur already there.
I've done something similar - not necessarily because I wanted to make money from it, but because I truly have a passion for learning this stuff, working with it, and creating (hopefully useful) stuff with it.
Noooo! Making money from software is eee-vill; information wants to be free! (Surprisingly, I haven't seen that obnoxious mantra here in a while)
Why the preoccupation with being open source? There will be many people out there who will be more than happy to rip you off, don't help them to do it.
Look, I'm trying to get my software business rolling and I'm finding four things:
a) Selling commercial packages for Windows is extremely difficult online. You really need to have a highly trained sales force and a serious marketing budget. Corporations can pay you the big bucks, but, you need to lay out some big bucks yourself. Unless you plan on trying to be a millionaire, its probably not realistic to try and cater to vertical corporate markets via shareware or online software sales. It costs a ton of money to get in there... unless you hit the jackpot with that simple utility or game that everyone just have to have.... but there's a lot out there.
b) Advertising revenue from being the main web site for free software often exceeds the revenue you can get from shareware anyway. This surprises me, but, I've spent far more time bashing my head against Windows shareware world but the Linux world, for a lot less investment, is making more money for me. It may be that my writing is better than my software, for sure, but, those little google adsense keywords do pretty good.
c) There's really more interest in Linux, and, bigger players can give you some serious help. For example, IBM has an excellent solutions directory and keeps a database to help hook your system up with potential clients. That can translate into development work for you, to add new features, and really as more of an architect or senior level person (having designed the original project), then, at a lower rate a normal code-drone would get.
d) Developing for Linux, or just having a site out there, can impress a lot of people in IT, and in some ways, better than Windows does. Everyone does Windows, and so being involved in Linux sets you apart. I have a client that's a closet Linux fanatic, and once I admitted that I too, love my dual opteron (until the SATA chip died), running Linux, our relationship got a lot better and I find myself being involved in ever cooler projects.
So, yeah, there's this belief out there that Linux equals starvation whereas Windows is money, but, its a complicated world out there.
Options abound. Here's one crazy thing I've heard of. As the copyright holder, there's really nothing that precludes you from selling both versions of the same product. You could sell your product for Windows, for sure, and you could open source it for Linux, if you like.
Another thing you could do would be to offer your software as FOSS, but host a web site as a service that does it. Yes, you would in effect allow other people to create competition for you, but, usually, the biggest problem you have isn't the software, but getting people to buy into the idea that you have being your software. If you create a program to make a service that is FOSS, and suddenly a 1000 web sites pop up making it, you've in effect gotten free advertising for your concept, and the advantages of that cannot be understated.
All I can say is good luck. In 2008 I'm going all out Linux - as soon as I get my Opteron mended -, and for the reasons I've listed, I think I'm more likely to make myself a millionaire giving software away than I would be selling it under Windows.
This is my sig.
You can open source it and still make plenty of money. Consider Qt, the graphical basis for KDE. Free for open source use, but not free for commercial use. Big companies will spend big bucks to use such software, while college students with too much spare time will be able to use and contribute. Just pick the appropriate copyright/license.
You've got several choices:
1) Sell Training
Write books, on-line training, seminars, whatever, and sell that as an adjunct to your open source project. Of course, those can be open source as well.
2) Sell Customizations
Offer to develop custom features or just consult on deployment. Some of those may be rolled in to a future version of the existing package if that makes sense.
3) Sell Support
Get people to buy support for the package and offer telephone/email support for issues. If the application is critical to a business, they may pay to have support on hand.
4) Sell access to the code under non-GPL license
Some applications are release GPL, but offer the option of paying to get a closed source commercial license.
5) Split the package in to open and commercial packages.
Bundle the basic system as open source and then have add-ons that are commercial. This is sort of getting them hooked on the free version and then hoping they grow in to needing the features of the add-ons.
Regardless of which method you pick, you should realize it takes a lot of work develop a successful community around a piece of open source software. If your plan is to just throw the code out under an open source license, you're likely to fail. You need to promote your product, develop a group of users, have forums/lists for them to communicate, encourage developers, review and work on submitted code, and you need to spend time participating in those activities. Even then if your product isn't unique and interesting enough you won't get a following. Bottom line is that you need to be really committed to your open source project and it had better be best of breed or users will move to alternate choices.
I wonder how successful those paypal links are? I've asked a few people with these on their sites and they all said that it brings in very small amounts. Hopefully, with time, people will begin to pay for what they value rather than just paying because they have to.
In the OSS software I write (used by many of the bigger names out there) I've received very little in the form of donations (but thanks to those that have). More has been made by charging people for extensions or by alternate licensing (ie. changing for use of the software in non-OSS situations).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Sounds like you want to convert your "amateur" OSS "project" into a "professional" OSS "product". Checkout The Beekeeper Model
I wouldn't bet my family's ability to eat on this. The problem isn't that there isn't money to be made on support. The problem is that a single person working his garage on software is not a support organization. Consequently, when it comes time to release that software, serious people (the kind with money) with a serious need for support (the kind they're going to bank their business on) won't trust a single individual for support. So your software will flow freely out, the support need may arise and support dollars may exist, but it's quite a gamble to assume they'll flow to you rather than to someone with a brand name and a committed resource of people that can stand behind a claim of support.
It's easy to want to believe you're going to get the money. But you are loads safer and much more likely to be right if you assume someone else will get it. You'd better assume you're going to get nothing and be satisfied with that. People may tell you otherwise, but I'd be surprised if they'd place money on that bet.
Advice, especially from evangelists, is cheap to offer when the one doing the offering doesn't have to deal with the consequences of being wrong. Don't let anyone convince you that doing something that is in the best interest of you and your own financial needs is some form of paranoia.
Of course, it's possible that the willingness of others to make free software has sufficiently driven down the price of software that there's no money you can make by selling it either. That's a different matter entirely. In that case, maybe you can sell service (supported by your own software, without releasing it), or maybe you just have something the world regards as worthless. That would be sad. But being sad would not make it impossible.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
They all insist on boring things like support, training, documentation etc. - stuff that FOSS traditionally lacks for the first few iterations, at least.
My suggestion would be to use the software as a sort of loss-leader. Give it away (hence the free) and sell your expertise in training staff in how to use it. Apart from bringing in some $$$$, you'll also get first-hand experience of what they like, what they have problems with and what other features would help. This is invaluable for version 2.
The other nice thing about running training,is that your costs are virtually fixed no matter how big the class size. Once you have covered your costs the fees from every additional student is almost all profit.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
This is an age old questions, was asked on /.s several times. Here is one from 2005: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/01/2145223&tid=117&tid=98&tid=4
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
You might try ransom licensing.
1. Make some videos that show off how awesome your software is, and post them on youtube.
2. Tell everyone that you will release your program under the GPL once you have received, say, $1000 in donations. Substitute however much money you want for $1000.
3. Follow through on your promise.
You will only be paid once, but that's the only sensible way to charge money for software. Software is not a product or physical good; the creation of software is a service.
If your open-source project gets you some cred, you should easily be able to find work doing customisations for businesses. There are usually far more people who would like to use your software than the number of people who are capable of installing and setting it up. Works for me anyway.
...and figure out if there's a market in the first place and what your baseline reference is. A lot of business ideas aren't as great as you thought they were, and I suggest you find out rather than blame the (lack of) income on being open source. Being open source is not exactly a great boon to your clients, it's not their core business to develop and downloading other variations that may not get the sums right off the Internet isn't exacrly appealing either.
You can always go dual license or OSS later, but closing up a GPL-only software will mark you as a bait-and-switch. It may not even be possible anymore if you start incorporating other people's patches. If you're a one man show, you need to be prepared that some other guy(tm) will think "hey, great tool I pick up from where he's gotten" and that he might live in India and charge those kinds of rates. Most companies keep their product through momentum and patch volume, if you slack for a few motnhs due to job or girlfriend or illness or whatever, suddenly you may be the one behind. Remember when you're in the custom development/support business, you're stuck doing what people pay you to do and they expect you to jump when they call.
I'm sorry if I sound rather negative but most people I can think of that make money using open source either
a) Have worked far more hours establishing their project than they'll ever get paid back
b) Have found some smart dual license model like Trolltech/Qt, MySQL, OpenOffice/StarOffice etc.
c) Deliver support on the distro level like Ubuntu, Red Hat, SUSE etc.
d) Live off various donations, grants and foundations which usually also implies a)
e) Deliver support for some core application which usually implies a)
It sounds to me like you want to make money off this right off the bat. To me that sounds rather hard, and I suggest you try it without burdening yourself with giving it away. If your position is more of "Well, I'll just release it and see what happens, maybe I can make money off this eventually" then I'd say OSS it. It takes time for businesses to get used to yoru tool, get dependent on it, evaluate its shortcomings and decide to go with it anyway by paying you. Just my 0.02$.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The conclusion I came to was to sell maintenance, upgrades, training and data conversion. I include the complete source code and database schema and its all very nicely documented. I cannot distribute the compiler because it is not open source ( Delphi Enterprise which includes all the runtime source ) but I include very specific instructions on how to set up the development environment and all the 3rd part bits that are required.
Doing so game me the option of including MySQL server at no cost as the database for smaller implementations. For larger implementations they are required to purchase Oracle since at the time MySQL 4.x simply could not handle the load.
So yes you can make money doing open source. Only the people that use it are required to have access to the source code, you do not, in my opinion have to make an announcement to the world that anyone can snag your product just because they feel like dorking around with it. It is available for download if you know where to look. And no I am never going to put it on any source forge.
Some will argue that this violates the spirit of GPL or FOOS, but I submit that it does not violate the rules themselves. The source is there, you can get it, but it will cost you money to be able to build it
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
It depends a lot on the type of product you have developed. I also created a financial software application (Data Loader) to support a data service offered by Standard & Poor's. I originally tried open sourcing the thing and realized it was such a niche product, that no one would really have any interest in helping out and that it would be easier and faster for me to add features and guide the product without external intervention. Additionally, the user-base would never exceed 10-20 people i dont think.
If your product will attract a lot of attention and be of use to lots of people, then it may be more advantageous to open source. My main problem with open sourcing an application is as follows. Lets say your application could save a company 10 000 dollars a year (which is roughly what mine does). If you open source the project, there may be enough incentive for a company to simply take the code and adapt/customize it themselves without paying you a dime. If you left it closed source, they would be more inclined to pay you a licensing fee than to go without the product since its saving them a good deal.
So id say you need to compare how inclined potential clients would be to simply take the code and run versus the possibility of garnering attention from having an open source product and selling services/support for the product (which would only happen if it reaches a large user-base).
There is a similar applications that has done the same thing here locally. It's called Active Agenda.
Software website - http://www.activeagenda.net/
Fresno OSS group - http://www.fosug.org/
Video of last meeting with OSS software development - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4841694039017243572&hl=en
If you really want to open source it:
- Write a book, sell the book
- In the book, offer consultation
If the consultation gets popular, organize into more general support services.
Of course, you could just take the dip & sell it.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
My experience in the field tells me one should get a paying job instead of providing "customer" services. Business customers are nut and they will only drive you crazy with their stupid and unreasonable demands.
Talk to someone who understands making money, which means DO NOT ASK THIS ON Slashdot....
Just ignore the answers, maybe someone said something clever, but as with 99.9% of the registered users the comments yo get will be from people who have nu clue about the subject they claim knowledge off....
i will be eternally grateful for being able to contribute to and write about open source software ... my first foray into open source was in 1984 when i wrote an open-source graphics library (in 8080 assembler) for the Nec Starlet (8401-LS if memory serves)... i made a total of $10 off that effort, but the learning experience pushed me to try other platforms...
this was followed by a speech library for the early Macintosh, and after getting a developer's license, several XTensions for the 3.X versions of QuarkXPress... then a Palm OS app (still available!), and since then numerous scripts and client modifications for other platforms and equipment interfacing (such as high-frequency radio transceivers)...
but these were all hobby pursuits... my real money was made in writing about Linux and X... i didn't contribute directly to the wealth of software we enjoy today, but i certainly supported the movement and am eternally grateful for all the efforts of open source programmers - thanks, guys and gals!
so yes, it is possible to earn money with open source, even in related endeavors...
here's hoping to your success...
No software is ever going to make you money, closed-source, open-source, or free. What makes you money is your *contribution* to the economy, ie the value you create, and your *reputation*, *popularity*, or *fame*. So the recipe for success is: Build something people want (value) and gain popularity and reputation for your contribution. If you have some popularity and reputation it's then not that hard to make some money by selling services, minor products associated with your contribution, etc. Focus on popularity and getting as famous as you can. And the best way to do that is to build something people want and give it away for free. Afterwards, when people start using it, it's easy to start offering other associated services and products for a fee.
and it wasn't even mine. This, however, won't happen:
There are many aspects of the application that I don't have time to refine, and other developers could definitely improve upon my work.
You'll never get people to make meaningful contributions to your project, unless it's huge and has a good community, which some accounting program won't. Most likely, someone will hire you to do this modifications you want to do, and that's how you'll make your money. That's what I did.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
"Finally, there is also consultancy for your own project. You need help installing it? You want a feature? Hand over the cash!"
And there's the flip side. Making software difficult to install and use. Making it feature poor and skimping on documentation.
"No, I haven't done it. Mainly because I'd rather not be my own boss. The payoff is high, but so are the risks. I'd rather be a wage-slave and let my boss bear the risks."
Bear the risks.
"Also: Software as a service"
Long as it's not a web service
I'll corroborate parent's post. As a college student there's really no better way to look good than to contribute to open source, which may be a selfish reason to participate, but eh. I contributed some code a while back to phpBB, and did some mods on it that weren't ever in the trunk, but were released for free. Lo and behold that impressed an interviewer and landed me a pretty sweet internship. Honestly speaking, though, contributing to FOSS projects at least keeps you sharp, and gives you something to talk about in an interview, should it come up (and it does, very, very often).
Rather than looking to earn money from things, look to earn it. You are the brand, you are the source of the value you sell to others, and you are the only thing you have full control of. Make yourself valuable enough to people that they will give you some of their value for some of your value. How would your approach to that change if, instead of thinking of the software as the results of getting that "job", you thought of it as part of the resume? How would your approach be different if you sought to create value that can neither be copied, nor stolen, nor depleted, and used your software as evidence of your ability to do that? Or a platform on which to do so? If that software is an investment in the brand of "you", would it be wise to cash it out now?
Insightful and funny are really the same thing, except one has a punch line.
99.99% of the software industry in France is only based on software services.
Namely, its entire software industry can switch to open source software without crippling it.
There are two general ways to make money off of software: you either require other people to pay for the privilege of using and benefiting from the use of the software, or you make money by using the software yourself. No one would ever pay to use software unless the actual use of that software benefited them (i.e. financially). I have to explain this to management and sales people all the time because they are suspicious of why anyone would want to create OSS unless there was a payoff, which in many cases is to simply allow a tool to solve a problem. Problem-solving can translate into money. Writing your own stock analysis software is one example where someone may benefit financially without selling the software.
If, however, you yourself can't benefit financially from merely using the software, then you'll have to charge people somehow. How you do that will depend on what your software does. Does the program download specialized data for some advanced features? Just because the source is free doesn't mean every possible data-source has to be. Does the software allow plug-ins? Give all the essentials as open-source so that most people find it useful, but make proprietary plug-ins that only the big companies that need really advanced features would care about.
Also, why is it that people have remote controls for their car stereo when both the stereo and the remote is one arm's length away? Because, apparently, people are willing to pay for even the most miniscule of added convenience. If they want a set of fancy wizards for something they could have easily done themselves if they RTFM, charge for it.
Whichever route you choose. closed or open source, you need to evaluate your prospects. Are you capable of selling and maintaining it? Writing the code is necessary, but not enough to make money: do you have potential customers? How much work is going to be required to support it? Do you have enough time to do that? If you keep it closed-source, do you have the means to enforce your copyright? Have you written the documentation that goes along with it? Have you fully tested it?
Running a business is not a trivial undertaking -- you have to deal with licensing issues, taxes, liability and so on. Are there restrictions on running a business out of your home? What restrictions does your current employer put on you?
Unfortunately, the effort required is not really commensurate with how much money you want to make -- there's going to be a lot more effort that just writing a program if you want anybody else to buy it.
This is not a general advice but, for your particularly piece of software, what I would do is to publish some good, professional manuals and documentation, and sell those.
If it is geared toward final users, that is the way to go, IMHO. If it is geared toward institutions, you might do well selling support.
morcego
A nice example of how to earn money with GPL can be found under here
I don't know the details of your app. However, I have noticed that some software lends itself very well to the 'service' path. Many applications are usable right out of the box -- no assembly required. But others must be adapted to different companies' requirements, sometimes in a major way. In that case knowledge of the source and the philosophy and the domain knowledge of the application make a great opportunity. The company I work for guards its source code, but the truth is if it fell into someone else's hands they couldn't use it, each of our projects is user specific, because the requirements mandate deep changes to the source, requiring deep knowledge of the customer, the code and the industry.
Bitter and proud of it.
There's nothing that says you can't sell free software. Put up a web page, say "send me $X and I'll mail you a CD-ROM. (Or let you on to the area of my site where you can download a zipfile.)" Beside binaries, the CD-ROM (or zipfile) has a source tarball and a copy of the GPL (or whatever license) on it; these extras will be ignored by 99% of your users.
Some users will make copies for their friends. Fine. That will happen whether you make source available or not.
Somebody might resell copies at $(X-delta). If you want to preserve your uniqueness, trademark a name and a logo; see Red Hat verus CentOS for an example. Include a nice printed manual or other premium for customers of the "official" version. (And if the knockoff company starts selling a whole bunch more copies than you do and raking in the cash, make a deal with 'em to join forces, your development plus their marketing.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This is what I (who is making a PhD in finance/artificial Intelligence) is doing (in conjunction with other collegues, however we are not releasing the code yet.:
You can release your application at sourceforge.net, however make your application web based. Create whatever "client" you need as a web based interface (you can use Java or even Flash if you need more complex interfaces) and you can make the backend in Java or any other server side processing technology. Then you sell a suscription service in which customers pay to use whatever service you are selling (that will include other types of expertise).
In my case, we sell simulation software services where people provide scenarios (configured by a web based or some other GUI) and then use such configuration files to run simulations in the server side of the system. That way you also have no piracy issues (in the case of open source that is of course not an issue).
I find other advise qutie funny, like the book writing idea. For me it is aking to opening some shop and then putting a coffee shop or restaurant in order to make some profit because the first thing you did is not profitable. Why didn't you opened the restaurant in the first place!!
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
The project is available for Linux, windows and OS X 10.4.... And I can testify that windows users are the most annoying... here's why (warning, this might be a little generalizing):
- They have low technical insight.
- Their platform causes all sort of weird bugs, that you've got no chance of fixing, since you can't reproduce them.
- Their antivirus and firewall creates problems.
- They have no respect for free software, and don't know the difference between free software and freeware!
- They don't use Google to try and solve their problem.
When most windows users have no respect for free software philosophy, I do understand why some people wants to charge for redistribution of Windows binaries. Though I wouldn't personally do something like that with my project, since nobody would use it then...
"I find other advise(sic) qutie(sic) funny, like the book writing idea. For me it is aking(sic) to opening(sic) some shop and then putting a coffee shop or restaurant in order to make some profit because the first thing you did is not profitable. Why didn't you opened(sic) the restaurant in the first place!!"
So why not just find an existing FL/OSS project and write a book? The community gets documentation, the book writer gets $$$, and the project becomes more viable. After all, as your post demonstrates, good technical writers are hard to find.
After all, as your post demonstrates, good technical writers are hard to find.
Wow, yeah AC, sometimes spelling in a language which is not your native language can get tricky, specially at 11:45 pm.
Más bien sería interesante saber, wie viele wie viele sprachen sie sprechen?
But hey, you keep your editing work going!
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
And yeah, Sunday night is a good time to feed the trolls =oP
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I had, in one of my classes, built an interface to GOCR (not Jack Black's band but the Gnu Optical Character Recognition project). This was a while ago. It was in C and it was shitty. I mean really shitty.
I kinda wished I had checked in that interface as I'm sure it's lost somewhere on the university network now. What if she had actually used it?
Well...if it sucked that bad, she probably would have shown you the door when you admitted writing it! ;)
In our case, our CMS was closed-source for the first seven years as we built websites for clients. In fact, we never set out to build a CMS, really. We were building sites and needed a way for site owners & content editors to change content on their own sites. A year or so ago, we open-sourced and are very glad we did.
Our company has 16 staff and we make money by customising our open source offering on a case-by-case basis for our clients. We have no shortage of work coming in and our community is growing. We offer a number ways for people to contribute to our project and we provide free support to our community via forums, IRC, and in general, however we can.
Again, scratch your own itch! Make your software useful (profitable) to you first. You may be able to open source it simultaneously, but keep in mind there is the maintenance / upkeep of the community to consider.
Good luck to you. -- Brian Calhoun (b r i a n @ NOSPAM s i l v e r s t r i p e . c o m)
1/ Razorblade Model - low selling price (FOSS 'giving away' in your case), charge for recurring consumable This model has already been hinted at above with the 'sell support' approach but this is not a reliable recurring consumable. Is there some other resource that you could sell on a recurring basis eg virus database updates for virus checker? 2/ Eating Someone's Lunch Model - if your software is good and you aggresively market it you should consume all the competition, yours is free after all, and free is a huge competative advantage. Once you own the market you start to charge for superior or subsequent versions. Maintaining a short period of prior version compatibility you then close the door. 3/ Loss Leader Model - essentially 1 & 2 revolve around this, your FOSS is your loss leader. But this model can exert itself in more esoteric ways such as the several examples given in the comments where the software has come to benefit them at some later date. Serendipity aside it would make sense to have a portfolio of all your work and if your work has a thriving community 'market' around it you are evidentially a good programmer. I suppose it depends on how you define 'profit'!
we are all cosmic nuclear waste
1) Give it away, and sell its advantages strongly far and wide
If you're giving it away, exactly what is it you're selling?
FalconShould there be a Law?
There are many ways to still make money with a product even though it is open source. I recently did a paper on it and found this site to be informative. http://www.itmanagersjournal.com/feature/314
You may also want to consider this story, and consider that you might not have to completely open-source your software to satisfy your paying customers.
Many, many years ago Michael Tiemann wrote a brilliant article on this very topic.
He and a couple of friends started Cygnus software, investing $6,000 to get
started. They added features (well, in the end pretty much built) the
GNU development tool chain. Their customers were embedded developers.
Here's the article:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/tiemans.html
I'm really sad to have come in late on this discussion because this
article is a must read for anyone wanting to make money writing free software.
Tiemann, et all became very rich doing it this way (Cygnus was sold
to RedHat for $600 million -- although a venture capital company
walked away with some of that money).
My quick take on it: Get money up front. Get paid for development,
not software. Realize that marketing is probably at least as
important was programming.
I really believe there is still a huge niche for custom software
development built on free software. Over 90% of software development
is in house development (OK, it's a number I pulled out of my
ass, but I think it's accurate). Your job as a free software
developer that wants to get paid is to convince companies that
you can deliver software to them cheaper than their in house
teams.
So what you need to do is to get a track record in the niche
that you want to work in. Then you need to hit the streets
and knock on doors. If you build it, they may or may not
come. You need to market your work. You need to show these
companies the potential for using your services rather than
building it themselves, or buying it off the shelf.
As Tiemann showed, if you do it right you will have more than
enough work to keep you fed.
This won't be popular but don't open source it in the FSF sense, but do supply the source code with the product under commercial license. Unless you find a company to sponsor your work on it, you won't make money from the work you've already done with a GNU public license. (Yes you can make money with consultancy, customization etc. but only if the product's very popular and if you're a VERY talented and dedicated programmer)
If you want to release the source code you could at the same time release a free for personal use, evaluation and development (but not commercial use) version. Include source code with this version too. It doesn't have to be crippled either. It just has to be clear that it's not legal to use it commercially, or modify and re-distribute under the license you choose/create (or any other). Larger companies and those with a fragile reputation will comply (or at least some of them will, and you will make money). Some even have software compliance departments.
Do not include restrictive copy protection, DRM or other such nonsense. Accept some people will "pirate" it and don't waste time, money or resources trying to prevent that.
By all means also offer support contracts and consultancy.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I've had a somewhat similar experience to the parent, as well.
I got no mod-points...
Brooklyn Bridge: Would you like to buy it?
I've gleaned this basic point already from others on this post, but I feel I had to reinforce it...charge for support. The puppy dog approach (keep it for a few days, decide later if you want to keep it) is an old way of injecting a new product into the system. You simply become the vet when the new owner doesn't know what to do with your little financial software "pup".
That would be, "make a product that can do anything, but make the documentation such that you can't find the answer in it until you know it" . . . oh, you said "Saas", not "Sas" . . .
hawk, who always found it quicker to right custom code in Fortran than to deal with Sas documentation
1. Software as Service and sell subscriptions, similar to the 37 Signal's Basecamp
2. Create online clubs, and charge for the club membership in different packages ( 3 month, 6 month, 12 month ) and within the clubs offer latest releases of the source code, documentation, and access to the community forum where members can meet each other and learn how to further customize your code, or read your tutorials on how to maintain use or customize your applications.
3. Get sponsors and display their logos on the hot spots on your support website
4. Your source code will be downloaded around the world, so on the software splash page or "About" page list the name of your sponsors. Be careful about using Google Ad words, because your online community might backfire. Sponsors are good, because when community members like your product, they tend to like your supporters too.
5. Make your Software as modular and vanilla as possible. Put together a a software development team and sell customization services. All companies have slightly different needs, so there is good money in offering training and customization services. Remember that customization cannot be mass produced, therefor it is often in demand.
6. Organize development and administration training sessions and bootcamps and charge for it. Train consultants, or offer consulting services about your product.
7. BUILD A COMMUNITY FOR YOUR SOFTWARE ( very important ) Members give you constant feedback on how to improve your product, test and report bugs on a public tracker, they take the word out, and help each other out on how to use and customize the application. Basically you reduce the cost of product development, marketing, and support. That means you'll hit the break-even much quicker and become profitable.
Making money from open source is still a new concept, and new models are being created ever few month, so stay alert and learn.
A business model is like yet another algorithm. It is a box that you put 100$ in and you get few hundred dollars out, and once you have that box, everybody else would be happy to put in money too. So focus on getting the algorithm right.
Right...now, it was some time ago since I touched base with the nix OSS world, but I had a feeling there was kind of an improvment going on there as well with regards to trying to make installers as smooth as possible, not just relying on everyone being able to check out from CSV?
.NET project, I expect to download an (.msi) installer that will set up everything so that it is ready for use - exes, source, doc, the lot. Trying to charge for that would be....well, embarrasing.
If I download an open source
I provide hosting, support and implementation services for SQL-Ledger (sql-ledger.com) which is also an open source financial application. Although I did not develop sql-ledger, I am developing a number of addons and patches which I am releasing to the community through my website (http://www.ledger123.com/). I selected the best possible platform (joyent accelerator http://www.joyent.com/accelerator/) for my hosting so that my customers could just forget about issues with security, reliability etc. Added round the clock support to customers and free support to community and result is not bad. Making enough to feed a full time staff of two and one part time sysadmin. But I had the luxury of taking a mature open source application and build business around it.
If it's standalone piece of software, go MySQL way.
If it's web-based, sell to Google.
You can start off with the code being open but copyrighted. Tout this as "free escrow" if the work is abandoned. If you can get some money for this product then you can consider FOSS license in order to increase public help (this, for someone wanting to make money from software, is really why you FOSS it: updates from the public).
If you can't get any traction for your software, you can GPL it and see if that kickstarts any business (though, since this will likely be word-of-mouth, you may have nothing for a few years).
Remember 90% of new ventures fail. FOSS won't stop failure, but it may make it less likely (though it will make it unlikely you'll make huge amounts of cash too).
It's good to have a reality check every once in a while and see whether things have changed. Also, not everyone is a seasoned veteran who knows what slashdot questions were answered some three years ago..
While the Exhibit B clause does add some additional restrictions that may not be quite as "open source" as GPL'd code, it does provide a good balance between supporting the open source community and making a profit. Our Exhibit B clause is below, if this helps.
CATS Public License 1.1 Exhibit B:
Additional Terms applicable to the CATS Public License:
You MAY NOT use the Licensed Software to operate in or as a time-sharing, outsourcing, service bureau, application service provider or managed service provider environment.
The following copyright notice must be retained and clearly legible at the bottom of every rendered HTML document: Copyright 2005 - 2008 Cognizo Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
The "Powered by CATS" text or logo must be retained and clearly legible on every rendered HTML document. The logo, or the text "CATS", must be a hyperlink to the CATS Project website, currently http://www.catsone.com/.
"How have you dealt with trying to turn a reasonable profit on your work while remaining open-sourced?"
Use - or create - an open tool, then get paid for the work you do with the tool.
1. Write software
2. Open-source software
3. Ask Slashdot for advice
4. ???
5. Profit!
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
Hi,
I have had to deal with this in my own company. What I can suggest is not to OSS until you are sure of the business model you want.
In the mean time, give your application away for free, build up a small user base (local) and start charging for support.
Once you have people using it and can see what model you want to follow, then make your decision.
OSS does not mean GPL!!! you could give your source to your big customers!!! or even allow them to extend your software using python, etc,.....
"How do I make money on open source software?"
Simple, learn to say "Do you want fries with that?"
The other answer, which probably what most of the other writers will provide, is to sale services to customize the software for users. The first job though is guaranteed to make you some money.
How about making money on open-source software by bundling it with hardware? Now this might not be relevant for our financial software test case, but it might be; could he sell servers pre-loaded and pre-configured with the OSS software? The revenue source here comes down to one thing: convenience.
I'm the designer of the HamHUD amateur radio controller and our software (really, firmware) has always been open source (first a generic license, then GPL). We've even published the schematic diagrams to the hardware online, and a few people have built their own. But most people keep coming to us to buy the hardware with the software pre-loaded. Very few users compile or modify the software. Why? I believe it's 1) convenience, and 2) most of my users don't have the technical expertise either to build hardware from scratch that looks as good as ours, or load and configure the firmware.
Technically, I'm only making money on the hardware, because that gets marked up over my costs. But without the OSS firmware, HamHUD would be a box with a a button, a knob, and a blank display. Considering again the financial software, a client might install our friend's OS financial software on off-the-shelf computer hardware, but I'd bet that a pre-configured, drop-in-and-go server might be worth a lot more than either the hardware or the software alone.
This concept of bundling OSS with hardware to make money can be extended even further, to systems. In our next HamHUD device, we will be selling one piece of commercially-available hardware and a custom hardware piece, along with OSS software, all bundled together and ready-to-run. The custom hardware won't operate without properly-configured OSS software, requiring the tedious editing of lots of (intentionally) arcane configuration files under Linux. Will users try to compile and configure the software themselves, buy and configure the off-the-shelf hardware, and buy our custom hardware, all in the name of saving a buck? I doubt it seriously, and I am basing my revenue expectations on my belief that they would rather buy the whole pre-configured thing.
Hope that helps. I would be interested in comments on this approach.
www.backwoodsengineer.com
This can be difficult. Here's the problem: If your software is good, somebody else can buy a copy from you and then use that copy to sell services (or the software) to customers. They will be able to undercut you because you incur costs writing the software (even if it is just your time), while they don't (since you wrote the software for them).
To date, people have relied on either branding (we wrote it, so we know it, so hire our services) or copyright control (we can sell you a version under a different license) or proprietary extensions (buy our Expert version with whizbang feature not found in the open source release) to try to make this work, but it can be a challenge. Personally, I like the branding approach, and the cost of enabling some competition is hopefully offset by the market size growing due to more people knowing and using the software.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
This one's dead simple.
Open source the information about your expenses and current cash flow.
Don't supply all the gory details, i'm sure just a couple of totals will do.
Build into the software a method to optionally assign a tiny cash flow to help support you. Y'know, like a dollar a week or something - make it optional but essentially a micropayment.
People and businesses who find the software useful will probably like to pay just to feel good/secure about using the thing.
The trick is to get a small but renewable resource (income stream of reasonably small per user quantity) and maybe include a method for people to submit pledges to support requests for new features.
Maybe also include instructions for setting up and / subscribing to such a support feed, i'd certainly like a few of my favourite authors using such a system, so i can help support their writing so they can get back to writing the next book rather than working full time to make ends meet goddamnit.
Hell, you'll probably have to set up a secure server to administrate such a system. But even something basic to get started with would be good.
If you did that, your software would be ideal for many people - get the other OSS guru's using it, as well as the "new media" authors, and it'll have a cult following in no time.
Perhaps the media companies are right about one thing, that it is time for micropayments to make sense, but let's have the money go straight to where it's deserved, rather than into big media's pockets.
The value of FOSS is in the PEOPLE, not the product. You'll make money because nobody else is YOU. It's possible that somebody could service and support your product better than you... but somebody has to be willing to take that risk. But most won't if you're doing a good job. So in general, we pay Red Hat, SUSE, etc. because we like the support hey give and we figure that we wouldn't be as good at doing all of that ourselves (building a distrib, making patches, etc).
Making money from FOSS is all about the support. That's why there's really no push to make the stuff stable or secure, since getting businesses foolish enough to use your product to start ponying up cash to fix stuff is going to become your bread and butter. This works even better if you can "double dip", getting more than one company to pay you to fix the exact same thing.
Observe Teh Lunix for a perfect example of this in action. They hit a HUGE payday by suckering teh city of Munich into converting all their computers over to Teh Lunix... and failing miserably at it. How many billable hours do you think a successful implimentation (aside from the fact it's a practical impossibility) would have worked out to, as opposed to the foregone conclusion of their disaster? That's right, there's no comparison. The success would have netted a member of their high paid legion of consultions about $50k, at the most. But this way, they've been making at least $100/hour for at least 40 hours per week... since 2002!
So now, rather than focusing on their failures at the desktop (since they have to run Windows... in a VM!!!... on at least 80% of the machines there), they've switched focus to some crappy FOSSie web app they cludged together... and are proclaiming that as Munich's great success! GWB should just start bombing them for having Weapons of Mass Distraction. I'd be really interested to hear how many hundreds of millions of dollars Munich has squandered on Teh Lunix on Teh desktop.
So that's all you need to know about making money with teh FOSS. Find a niche, get some foolish organization with lots of money addicted, then bleed them dry. First time is free!
These were pointed out by others, but I strongly feel the two most important keys to success for an open source project are marketing and modularity. Like someone else said, hit the pavement and sell your work. You better be good at it, because it's a lot harder than you think. If you aren't good, find someone else and have them work solely on commission if you can't afford to pay them. Second point: modularize your software. Keep a portion of it non-free and make money off selling it.
Of course, everyone always says "sell service and support". Guess what: service and support are the two worst aspects of software. They're not fun, they can be tedious, and it can be a lot of work to get them to pay for themselves when you're first starting. Why would you want your bread and butter to be the most grueling part of your job?
----- obSig
Companies like AVG (German Antivirus co.) give away very good free products. If you want then to use on a network or for a business or want particular extra features then you pay.
This works particularly well if you can have people use your software for a long time and then absolutely need the extra feature(s).
With financial software though verity of results is paramount.
I can appreciate your position on "getting a job", but if I have great ideas, the WORST thing I could do for myself is to "work for someone else" so that they can get rich off of my great ideas. Suppose I have an innovative idea for a program. From here, it looks like I have 2 paths:
0) I patent the tech, make it closed-source, and lock it down as well as I can. If you want to use my program, you have to pay me $20. Suppose five people buy it per day. I make a modest income($36,500) from the program, until Microsoft buys me out for $10 million and includes the program with their next version of Windows Vista, Millennium Edition.
1) I can opensource it and "hope" that someone doesn't know how to install a program. Because it's opensource, however, most of the problems are resolved via forums which does not make me any support $. A couple times a week, some poor n00b won't know how to use synaptic/apt/yum/make/cygwin/etc and calls me so I charge him $40 to walk him through install the program. While I'm out, one kind soul donates $2. In the same day, 100 people have installed it via synaptic, which is a nice ego-boost but it doesn't put food on the table. A couple times a week, other t00ls buy generic hardon pills from the spamlinks at the side of my page, which nets me another $20. At the end of the day, I might have made enough to buy a tall-can, a couple ramen packs and put gas in my micro-bus(which I live in because my house got foreclosed on after I lost my job because I got caught working on my opensource project).
So here's my question: Is there really a way you can "live the dream" by opensourcing something? Please correct me if I am wrong because I do have a few ideas I've been considering bringing to reality, and I love Linux and foss, but I love money more - I'm tired of the rat-race, and there doesn't seem to be any clear cut "path to real financial success" with opensource, from the pov of a program-writer.
In communist countries copyright is non existent. That is one "small" detail GPL haters always forget to omit.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If the software is useful and it was generated by a one man band, where else are you going to get the better support?
To start with, companies that bet their operations in software will not be using this particular application, so a lot of what you are saying does not apply at all.
But smaller companies (other one man bands perhaps?) may find this useful and will pay for the support.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... to exploit commercially the product.
They would be in a win-win exchange with other people: they can continue to sell their application as they have done while benefitting from the work of other people that may be interested to fix problems (normally urgent ones!).
Yes, that opens you to competition, but others have done it (Trolltech comes to mind) and seem to be doing fine.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There are a few other variants:
No, I will not work for your startup
Geeks do not typically make good salesmen and salesmen do not typically write good software. Soooo, you need to find someone that can sell the software for you. This is the only way to success really.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!