Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Louis Suarez-Potts Talks About Making Money with FOSS (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the bringing-free-and-open-software-to-the-masses dept.

Louis Suarez-Potts has been community manager for OpenOffice since it was sponsored by Sun Microsystems. He's still working with OpenOffice now that it's under the Apache Foundation umbrella. He also has a business going, along with several other long-time Free and Open Source boosters, called Age of Peers. They say it's "a collective forum for consultants, practitioners and boutique agencies, to collaborate on a bigger picture. We mix these ingredients in an organization built to foster collaboration, and harness creative cooperation into powerful new ideas." The company is focused on Open Source developers and companies, and often doesn't charge startups or individual developers for their services. They will be doing a live Google Hangout interview on March 5 that might give you some ideas about how to start, manage, and market an Open Source project -- even if you have no money to spend, which many people who have good ideas do not, at least when they get started. (Alternate video URL)

1 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Saurez-Potts Open Source Stone Soup by Chemisor · · Score: 3, Funny

    Once upon a time, there was an open source developer who published an open source project on GitHub and declared that he was going to make a lot of money from it. People were curious; how could he make any money from what he gave away for free? So they asked him what his secret was.

    He thought a moment and said: "You too can be making money from your free software project. All you need is to become a consultant."
    "Really?" exclaimed the people "We never thought of that! What do you consult about?"
    "I consult companies on how to make money from their open source projects"
    "Oooh. That's clever. Uh... but what do you use your OSS project for?"
    "Sometimes those companies sometimes hire me to write something for them."
    "Your OSS project?"
    "Well, no. They usually want something different made."
    "But it's open source, right?"
    "Uh, no."
    "So your advice is basically to put your OSS project on your resume so companies know you can code and then will give you a job?"
    "Well, yes..."
    "So you are not really making any money from your OSS project, you are just using it to get a job?"
    "Uh..."