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?"

Comments

Value Earned is Experience & Recognition, Not

[eldavojohn]

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. Ok, I don't think that you are looking at a sure fire solution here. I agree with the parent but he beat me to it so I'll post this as a reply.

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.

FOSS != Money unless you're willing to spend time

[Damocles the Elder]

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.

Sell the .EXE files

[Marcion]

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.

sell a service on top

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Making money w/ FOSS

[LorenzoV]

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.