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Earning Money with Open Source Software?

Posted by Soulskill on from the sweat-of-my-brow dept.

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?"

4 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Merchandising by sakdoctor · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sell T-shirts and mugs.

    Oh wait, that's musicians.

  2. Easy! by UbuntuDupe · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  3. Re:Learn from movies who have succeeded by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've been working on a financial application ... Yes, or he could learn from movies like Office Space and Superman 3 and edit the software so that it moves the fractions of cents lost in transactions to an unnamed bank account.

    Also, drop the 'But they'll send me to Federal pound me in the ass prison' attitude.
    --
    My work here is dung.
  4. Re:Are you new here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If there is no goal at the end of the train, then yes, your whole pyramid is built of meaningless crap.

    And then the whole stack of dominoes will collapse like a house of cards. Checkmate!