Commercializing Open Source Software 214
CowboyRobot writes "Michael Karels, system architect for BSD 4.3 and 4.4, has an article on ACM Queue about the challenges in trying to make money from open source software. From the article: 'As users of the software, open source contributors have certain common interests in making the software stable and usable.' but 'When additions require modifications to the base system, there may be resistance to incorporating the changes.'"
but... (Score:3, Funny)
Yes (Score:2)
Oh that and personality clash...
Q.
Making Money (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Making Money (Score:5, Interesting)
Money can help affect political change, and when coders pass on the chance to make money, they also pass on the chance to affect political change.
Obviously you can still make a change without money, but it's quite a lot easier if you have some.
As I see it, when coders are giving their work away for free for professional use by international companies, they are being had.
So... (Score:2)
I choose to affect change by passing on the money. By devaluing things others charge money for, you affect change by making it harder for the establishment to compete. Example: If Wal-Mart wants to use your database software on their network you have about a snowball's chance of even finding out about it, much less making them pay. But if everyone has access to that same code, then Wal-Mart has that much less of an advantage in the marketp
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
The change you affect by passing on money is the marginalization of your voice. If instead you took that money and gave all of it to support some cause that you may believe in, you'd be affecting a lot more change.
And by devaluing things others charge for, you may indeed make it harder for the establishment to compete, but you also make it harder for independents too.
(Wrong) ^ 2 (Score:2, Insightful)
I think art makes the world a better place, and I think that the people making it should benefit.
For that matter, I'd also prefer to see artists getting more of the pie, rather than less.
Woohoo! (Score:2)
Keep it up; I treasure the "trolls" and "flamebaits" far more than the dittohead responses. In fact, I'm going to wrap them up in a bow and send'em to Torvalds...
Re:Making Money (Score:3, Interesting)
As I see it, when coders are giving their work away for free for professional use by international companies, they are being had.
And if the little coder use code Open-Sourced by large corporation, is he "having" them ?
I think you don't get the gift culture. IBM use the little coder's code, the little coder use IBM code, everybody is happy about it ! That's the point of open-Source : sharing. It goes both way.
Re:Making Money (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you don't get the corporate culture. You may give away your work with good spirit, but when a publicly-traded multi-national corporation like IBM gives away work, it's as a result of a complex set of business decisions.
In the case of IBM, it's most likely part of a larger anti-Microsoft startegy.
If y
Re:Making Money (Score:3)
I think you don't get the corporate culture. You may give away your work with good spirit, but when a publicly-traded multi-national corporation like IBM gives away work, it's as a result of a complex set of business decisions.
In the case of IBM, it's most likely part of a larger anti-Microsoft startegy.
If you believe that IBM is sharing code from some sort of sense of civic good will, you're mistaken...
This is irrevelant. The result is the same : I have access, for free, to code contributed by a b
Re:Making Money (Score:2)
Irrelevant? You're the one that characterized IBM's OS contributions as part of a "gift culture".
If all you care about is getting something for free, that's your decision. But as I see it, when coders give into an attitude like that, they reduce their share of econmoic power within a lager society, and re
Re:Making Money (Score:3, Insightful)
Why?
Corporations do lots of things all of the time to make themselves look less like the greedy, blood-sucking, economic parasites they are :-) - Just kidding.
Actually, corporations are run by people, some of whom like to think that they do more than provide a value neutral link in the economic chain. It makes them more productive and likely to join the company in the first place if they think that an org
Re:Making Money (Score:2)
Don't forget tax incentives... ;)
IBM is a publicly traded company, and its goal is to maximize return-on-investment. If supporting a cause helps better achieve that goal, they will support that cause.
You're absolutely correct that the people within the company most likely do personally care, but the execs in charge are pulling in tidy salaries for one reason: to make m
Re:Making Money (Score:2)
Yeah, I know - just like with Enron and WorldCom :-).
Re:Making Money (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you don't get the gift culture. IBM use the little coder's code, the little coder use IBM code, everybody is happy about it ! That's the point of open-Source : sharing. It goes both way.
That hasn't worked in 90% of the cases. In most cases, the company contributes some software, the OSS community uses it for free, all the time bragging about how the company should be grateful to them, the company starts to lose money and they come out with a non-free special edition, the OSS community gets bitter
Re:Just a comment on the "andromeda" thing (Score:2)
If you're interested, check out the site [turnstyle.com], and feel free to send me an email and ask questions.
Re:Making Money (Score:2)
You don't get it.
It takes money to rent buses and buy gas to get to a rally.
It takes money to print and mail flyers.
Money can indeed be spent in ways that help bring out political change, and pretending otherwise doesn't make it so.
Charging for custom work... (Score:5, Interesting)
A number of users have suggested that I charge for custom work, but when I ask them if they would ever pay for cutom work, the answer is always no.
Re:Charging for custom work... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the pragmatic world of business some code is more valuable closed and some is more valuable open. At the moment your code is more valuable to you closed so you can sell it and make a living directly from your work.
There will come a time, however, when if you are going to continue to make a living by peddling your own code you are going to have to produce more product.
If that product builds upon and enhances what you have already done Andromeda may actually be more valuable to you open.
Wisdom lies in accurately determining when that line is crossed.
KFG
Re:Charging for custom work... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey, I'm totally open to it -- but so far most of the arguments that I've heard haven't passed the 'real world' test.
A lot of people look to mega projects like MySQL as success stories, but that's not a likely outcome for most projects...
Re:Charging for custom work... (Score:2, Funny)
MySQL has grown from a $0m business to a $0bn business in just a few years!
Re:Charging for custom work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, and a good point.
I had assumed that a project like MySQL could pay it's own way, but I don't know if they are. If even hugely popular projects can't make it, then that doesn't bode well for small-time OS coders that hope to earn a living from their efforts...
Re:Charging for custom work... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Charging for custom work... (Score:4, Insightful)
We do not reward people for contributions to society ( or I'd be a happy a little camper churning out books for Project Gutenberg), we make our respective livings filching money from each other's pockets.
Socialism does not change this, unfortunately. It merely changes the pecking order and rules for doing the filching.
"Grant writer" has become a profession.
KFG
Re:Charging for custom work... (Score:2)
Short term, definitely.
Long term,
but 'When additions require modifications to the base system, there may be resistance to incorporating the changes.'
Open Source may be free, but it's not cheap.
Re:Charging for custom work... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's happening right now in the office suite field and stand alone word processors are a dime a dozen.
If you stay just ahead of the curve and become the open source "alternative" yourself you retain all the customer good will to your own company.
Do not discount the financial value of good will. When
Re:Charging for custom work... (Score:3, Interesting)
I totally agree. But the ability to do just that is based on time -- the time to interact, listen, and get to know each other. And you have to justify that time financially.
Some in this thread suggest that I should charge for that, but that just doesn't feel right to me, and I don't think it would feel right to my customers.
By charging for software, I can apply that not just to coding time, but also to personal support, improving t
Re:Charging for custom work... (Score:4, Insightful)
Customers are *cheap* !
They want everything you can throw at them for free, but are unwilling to pay (even modest amounts) for support or customization.
Yeah! We all know they *should* pay for support and custom code, but get real.
I have tried this route, honestly. But I fail to see how it can ever work out financially - unless you are blessed with dealing with somewhat different customers from my own (SME thru corporate).
If you have made this concept work, then please, for the love of Mike, explain to the rest of how you did it.
And now repeat after me:
- There is no Open Source business model!
- There is no Open Source business model!
- There is no Open Source business model!
Re:Charging for custom work... (Score:2)
Obviously a troll, but let's bait for advocacy purpose
They want everything you can throw at them for free, but are unwilling to pay (even modest amounts) for support or customization.
False. I am earning a living supporting, customizing and integrating OSS. It's exactly the same thing as if we where selling CSS, except we don't charge for license (and often are able to charge more for service because of that). If your client are that cheap, write them off and concentrate your sales effort on better
Customers are *smart*! (Score:3, Insightful)
I make money, not on support, but on development of extensions to some very specialized software which is the "best of breed" in its limited area. My customers aren't traditionel end-users, but either research institutions or consulting businesses who use my software for projects for their clients.
There are plenty of free-software business models, and the article does a good job of summrizing them, but there is no business model (based on free software or
Re:Charging for custom work... (Score:5, Informative)
Next, I decided I may as well give it away for free to bring more traffic into my site, and eventually decided to release it under the GPL.
At some point, after receiving many emails asking for help installing it (not everyone who knows how to make a web page knows how to set up a PHP script), it occurred to me that I could give people the option of hiring me to install it for them. A number of people have done so, and I've gotten some custom work from some of them too. I also get great ideas for improving the product when people ask to have it do things it can't do yet.
Has this experience convinced me to GPL anything else I've written? No. I do have a few other little things I'm giving away free, but I also have a number of products that I won't be releasing that way. Some I previously distributed as shareware, and found that very few people were willing to pay even a very small registration fee. So I switched to giving away a somewhat crippled demo version and requiring payment for the full version.
I guess the moral of this story is that if a enough users of a product will need someone to set it up for them, and if the price you can charge for setting it up is comparable to what you'd sell it for if you sold it, open sourcing the product can work well. But I don't think open source is the right model for everything--not unless you already have all the money you need and are just developing products for fun.
RT*M (Score:2)
Re:OT perhaps but, Not a Troll (Score:2)
subcriptions (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:subcriptions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:subcriptions (Score:2)
Read the comment, THEN reply.
I think offering Subscribtion services is about the best way to make money with open source (Transgaming, Lindows, Slashdot?, even tech support).
Re:subcriptions (Score:2, Interesting)
business world: the companies must focus their objectives
(and their proffit) at service offering based on their products,
and not on license selling.
Smaller projects though may not have success that way, and
some can think that this can monopolize the market.
Open source can be compared to *JUST COMPARSION*
communism: it is beautifull at theory,but in practice
it doesn't work perfectly. It is nice to "help our neighboor"
and sentences like "helping each o
software for free pay for the support (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:software for free pay for the support (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:software for free pay for the support (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is that it is posible to get a company to spend money to improve a piece of infrastructre like the linux kernel or mysql if they need that for other things. But only once the thing is getting to the point where it is basicly usable. While DEC had 2
Re:software for free pay for the support (Score:2)
Starve.
But do YOU charge for support? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is, most support is of the getting-started variety. Do you expect those people to pay for support *before* they have their software working? Or do you help them get set up for free, after which they have little need for support?
And if somebody writes to ask: "hey, quick question" Do you reply, sorry, but that'll be $5 first.
Re:But do YOU charge for support? (Score:3, Insightful)
Generally, the software and the support is sold as a package -- so yes, people are expected to pay for support before they have their software working.
You are confusing Free expression with Free beer.
Re:But do YOU charge for support? (Score:2)
You are confusing Free expression with Free beer."
Perhaps you have been drinking too much Free beer, I'm not confusing anything.
It seems you might be missing the point. You're a software dev. Do you help people get started for free? If you do, you've lost the main chore that somebody needs support for. And if you refuse to help them get set up for fre
Re:But do YOU charge for support? (Score:2)
Have you heard the stories about the sysadmins whose systems rarely (if ever, and then usually it's hardware failure) crash because they do a lot of preventative maintainence, etc? The higher ups don't think they're doing anything and then give them the boot.
Same thing here, in a way. You set up their software for free (which is, for the most part, 99% of the support base. Upgrading (if necessary) is another hurdle).
"OH great!" they say and write you a check
Re:But do YOU charge for support? (Score:3, Informative)
Charing for support is one of the popular ideas abouthow to make money from free software, but have you ever actually tried it?
Yes. That is how I am currently earning a living. My employer is a Linux integrator. Since mark-up on selling CSS is so ridiculously low, there is no point in generating profit for another business (the software manufacturer); you are better to work toward grabing a bigger chunk of the customer's money by selling service instead of license. In case you wonder, my employer i
Re:But do YOU charge for support? (Score:2)
Well, for starters, have you entirely written off the consumer market?
Your company may indeed benefit by selling services based on work originally done by other developers. IMHO, those developers made a mistake by choosing to give away their work so that your company can profit from it.
Re:But do YOU charge for support? (Score:2)
Well, for starters, have you entirely written off the consumer market?
Granted. I personnally don't think it is an interesting market anyway. If you plan on doing money selling software to the consumer market, you are in for a rough ride considering how the market is saturated.
However, I am sure it is possible to adapt the model to fit the consumer market. I don't have access to Transgaming financial report, but they seem to be doing ok selling a service to the consumer market while contributing all
Re:But do YOU charge for support? (Score:2)
And how much of the money you make goes into the hands of the original developer? After all, your bug fix doesn't put food on their table.
No, but they are welcome to do just as I do and use my work (or, more precisely, our collective work) to earn a living.
Re:But do YOU charge for support? (Score:2)
Re:But do YOU charge for support? (Score:2)
Anyway, to answer the question - yes. We get paid to support OSS servers, VPNs websites and applications. Sometimes we have developed these applications which themselves are "open sourced" (Axyl) and are used as a solution to propose to our clients.
Sometimes we use a specific tool (like Lucene) which we want an enhancement made to. We get our developers to enhance it and pass the code back to the project. Everyone benefits, including our customer.
So, your model works for yo
Re:software for free pay for the support (Score:2)
And here's my problem with that. Sellers want products that need to be supported. I'm not interested in writing those apps. I'm interested in OSs and apps that work, and are documented well enough that I don't have to pay someone to tell me where the Any Key is.
Joe IT: So, why should I switch to this lunix thing?
Vendor: It's really stable and cheaper to deploy!
Joe IT: Uh, how do make your money?
Vendor: Um, by selling you support.
Joe IT: At least Microsoft don't bullshit me when they're fucking me u
Re:software for free pay for the support (Score:2)
Hey, don't drag me into this sordid fantasy! ;-)
As far as I'm concerned, if you don't absolutely need linux, stick with Windows. I say this because - unlike corporate bean counters - I actually class salaries as expenses, and think (observe, rather) that Linux is only free as in beer if you don't value your time.
Re:software for free pay for the support (Score:2)
The reason (Score:4, Interesting)
Kleedrac
GPL *can* make money (Score:5, Informative)
If you dare to read the article, you'll find an amazing way of making money off GPL (look for 'Dual Licensing').
GPL requires the derived work sources to be published under the same license, which is unacceptable to many businesses. However, one can always bargain with author for separate license for their specific project.
Anecdotal evidence: I was involved in a proprietary project where we needed a very specific functionality. The opensource library doing just what we needed was there, but licensed under the terms of GPL. The contact with author revealed that he is perfectly willing to relicense it for us for a nice amount of $35000. And it really was an OK price because reimplementing the necessary functionality from scratch would cost the company considerably more, and we wouldn't fit into the timeframe anyway.
Re:GPL *can* make money (Score:2, Redundant)
Anecdotal evidence: I was involved in a proprietary project where we were using a GPL app (ezsetup). As part of creating a Windows CE installer, it links a GPL'd self extractor stub against your application in a single exe. We were uncomfortable with this and offered the author money for a non-GPL binary license, i.e. just a license to use a non-GPL version of the exe, not any rights over the source.
He refused.
More specifically, he couldn't understand our problem. "You're OK to use it under the GPL,"
Re: (Score:2)
Re:GPL *can* make money (Score:2)
As a developer, the GPL says that everything I write using a GPL library is a derivative work. I either buy the proprietary license or I am forced to GPL everything I create. But as a user, no images I create are derivative of GIMP, no emails I send are derivative of Evolution, and no documents I create are derivative of AbiWord.
Re:The reason (Score:2)
Re:The reason (Score:2)
That's a win. A big win. I would have guessed 10%.
40% of 100,000 people is a lot more than 100% of 50 people.
Re:The reason (Score:2)
Open Source Movies?? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not to say that there are not many, many very good independent films. I'm just saying that maybe Linux and other Open Source projects are trying to hard to get the wrong market.
With "limited" resources a focus should be made to take the server market from M$, drop the GUI crap, Linux WON'T win on the desktop (at least not yet). But can easily win on the server.
Michigan Photography [markscarlson.com]
Re:Open Source Movies?? (Score:2)
Re:Open Source Movies?? (Score:2)
I believe in open source (or at least want to). But I think money rules in this world. If you look at other forms of Media and Art, giving stuff away won't get movies like Matrix made.
Fine. But software is not media or art. It is functional.
This is not to say that there are not many, many very good independent films.
What do independent films have to do with open source software? Just as there are independent filmmakers, there are independent software vendors (ISVs). But that doesn't make them ope
Incremental progress vs. clean sheet art (Score:2)
Now what is software most similar to? Movies, or the art of making movies?
Some software is clearly similar to movies, this is especially true for many modern gam
Re:Open Source Movies?? (Score:2)
This statement shows that you don't get it, and I don't know where to begin..
I don't use Linux on my desktop because I think it will win or whatever.. I use it because it does what I need, and I suspect most people who use a Linux desktop use it for the same reason.
And who are you talking to when you say "drop the GUI
An opinion (Score:5, Interesting)
For example if I set up a cybercafe and write some software to deal with scheduling and billing, I'm not looking to make money from it. Instead I'm looking to make money from the business that relies on it. Providing a service is what is going to make me the money, and by opening the source of my billing software I may find a wealth of people willing to help me improve it and to use it themselves in other commercial products which pay their bills (and not mine). I get free upgrades and enhancements and they get the basis of a product that runs their business.
It's just an idea, and I'm no economist, but I have a feeling that this sort of set-up could work in many situations.
The key is educating companies in to believing that it's their (civic?) duty to contribute back to the OSS products they use. For example, if every business that uses Linux and has more than 1000 employees were to donate the time of one employee to improving Linux (working full time in the OSS community), we'd see pretty rapid improvement. People are begining to catch on (IBM, Red Hat...), but more of the same would be nice, IMVHO.
Re:An opinion (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:An opinion (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:An opinion (Score:2)
You have a point in that opening up source can give you a disadvantage by benefiting your competitors, and you may be right in your particular case. However, I think it is a relatively unusual situation. Even in your company, I imagine that not all the software you use is custom industry-specific applications. Probably most of the rest of what you use you buy in, and that's one area you could look at whether you would be better bringing in OSS and customising it to your needs.
Another question is whether y
Re:An opinion (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:An opinion (Score:3, Insightful)
If people started making it a DUTY to contribute back to a
Re:An opinion (Score:2)
Who is "we"?
I'm an OSS zealot, and I'm not trying to make money off it. I make money off my leet skillz developing software, and use OSS as a tool for that. I've contributed to several projects, as many others have, and it works just fine for me.
I suspect many of those trying to commercialize it aren't grass roots OSS people. I suspect they are business folks who see free software as something for nothing - something that's ripe for exploitation.
Re:An opinion (Score:2)
Second, it is necessary to overcome the comp
Re:An opinion (Score:2)
Someone needs to write that software for the cybercafe. But why does it have to be their chef? Surely a professional programmer would create the better software, but if he can't cook, are you going to fire him once he finishes writing it?
Yo
Re:An opinion (Score:2)
So many of the problems we see come about precisely because the software industry tries to mimic the business models of other industries. Faulty anti-piracy "protections," incompatable implementations and software that breaks standards,
it's really easy (Score:5, Interesting)
2 - try to "sell it" to as manny organizations as you can (for free).
3 - Make a contract with those organizations (for maintenance, bugfix, feature add)
4 - make it available to the world as open source.
What the organizations get:
1 - A "free" software. Maybe not the best there is, but sometimes they need months to decide on what to use (because it costs a lot of monney), but they need something now. There comes your program. And believe it or not, most times, your program will be the "final one".
2 - Direct contact with the developper
3 - A rapid deployment.
4 - Low risk (if you don't charge much for your software
What you get:
1 - costumers !!!
2 - flat fee revenue (aka you know what you're going to get in the end of the month)
3 - going open source enlarges your app "possible customers" universe.
4 - You can still get lot more customers with onsite or remote support for instalation, bugfixing, feacture adds.
What the world gets:
1 - Open Source Software
2 - open source software development backup up with real money.
I adopted this in the last 3 years, and its working great
Costumers? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:it's really easy (Score:2)
A reasonable open source business model (Score:4, Interesting)
There's money to be found (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's money to be found (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes but red hat makes their money off of other peoples work. In fact they are part of the problem, the coders that worte the software contained in the Red hat Dist have to compete now with red hat for "services", and redhat didn't have to write the software. Red hat and the other distrubutions are examples of fre
Re:There's money to be found (Score:2)
Time is precious, and programmers should be able to spend it how they like - without being required to maintain what they build, if they so choose.
the irony of it all is that . . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
people have been trained to do two things with software, purchase and steal. i cannot begin to tell you how many requests i get for office or windows cd's from people who don't wish to pay for it. fact is, mainstream computarded L-users feel better when they've shelled something out for the software, even if it is free. like carnies, we have to take advantage of the marks, because they ask for it, and wouldn't be entertained otherwise.
beyond that, i wish that lycoris would put OO.O on their distro, just so i could hand out disks of their stuff and not tell anyone what they're getting, let them use the stuff and be happy, like the most illiterate of my clients who get free software every time they ask for a crack.
Re:mainstream = lusers (Score:2)
think about cdw's fred commercial with the guy who wants the badass box. he says (this might b a paraphrase), "i don't know anything about computers, but i want a better one than smith has". software has hit that point, "i don't know what's up or down or if i
Free Software Businesses are viable (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been successfully running my own Free Software Business for the past 2 1/2 years. Every quater I hit or exceed my targets, and comfortably in profit - might not be rich but certainly have perfectly viable long term business.
My company provides consultancy, support and training ontop of the open source project I lead. The key to success is that the project competes well in terms of functionality and robustness with equivilant commericial products, and that you provide the services that the market requires ontop of that product.
FSB's really are little different than conventional companies, if you provide and product or service that the market want at a price that is reasonable for the customer, yet profitable to provide, then you're in business. It really is very simple. Robert Osfield.
Re:Free Software Businesses are viable (Score:2)
Note than I am only half-heartedly calling your bluff. I am really hoping that you aren't. I prefer Free Software, but the overwhelming majority of software companies (and by extension job oppurtunities) I see could not exist on service and support contracts alone. It is always nice to hear the specifics of a Free Software business success
Re:Free Software Businesses are viable (Score:3, Informative)
The OpenScenGraph - its an open source scene graph, which takes an OO approach to doing real-time computer graphics.
>What market do you compete in?
The main markets are Visual Simulation, Virtual Reality, Games and Scientific Visualization.
> What is the name of your company?
OpenSceneGraph Professional Services, based in Scotland.
> Web site?
http:://www.openscenegraph.org
The is also http://www.andesegineering.com which is a partner company that a
Where's the hype? (Score:2)
Next you'll expect slashdot readers to actually learn something about the history [multicians.org] of computing [arl.mil], and the basics of computer science [stanford.edu], and information technology [www.isbn.nu].
DonationWare (Score:2)
It's the best of the shareware and open-source models combined. POPFile is released under the GPL so it's free as in speech software and free as in beer. But people who appreciate POPFile can send in donations.
John.
Open source != free (Score:2)
So, open source can be sold. Whether free software can make money, that's another story all together.
ObSCOJoke (Score:4, Funny)
Making money out of open source software is so simple:
it's possible (Score:4, Informative)
So, how does one make money with OSS? Services. Granted, incorporating and building paid services around your open source software may not be simple in all cases, it can be applied very well to certain types of open source software.
For example, lets look at the CMS arena... lets say that I have a OSS CMS called "Cow". I make Cow available for FREE to anyone that wants it. BUT... Cow, being the sophisticated piece of software that it is, requires a web server with certain dependencies. Some people will be able to setup Cow and run it on their own web servers and some won't. There's the opportunity for service #1... specialized hosting for the Cow CMS. You can charge $$ for specialized hosting of Cow CMS based websites.
Since our fictional CMS (Cow) would be modular, you as the developer could make highly advanced and highly functional modules available to end users for $$. Perhaps they need a eCommerce module with some advanced capabilities. Perhaps they need a specialized payment gateway. There's opportunity #2.
Lets say that Cow CMS has grabbed the attention of a few big web sites. Now, you have some real commercial entities showing interest in the CMS. Opportunity #3
See, I think it is possible to make $$ with open source software by adding services of real value around the software.
A few random thoughts for the "services approach":
1. The software has to be good and have at least the majority of functionality of commercial competitors.
2. The software should be able to run on the windows platform.
3. The UI should be of commercial quality.
4. Not every type of OSS software will lend itself well to the "paid services" approach. CMSs are a good example, as would be any type of specialized vertical market software, such as Medical Practice Management systems.
5. You need to understand your market! Understanding your market means you'll understand which services would be of real value.
Where the money is... (Score:3, Interesting)
The other money is in CUSTOMIZING. People have a demand for stuff that works only for their situation, and demands an in-person presence that indians (in india, that is) cannot satisfy.
There's not a huge profit margin in selling commercial packages anyway, but about the same amount of time is spent making them work. SELL YOUR TIME!
(Don't buy the commercial vendors "TCO" arguments..)
Most of my clients are all too happy to get away from "license" payments. They want to spend money for actual value, and a "license" isn't an actual value, other than for the "privilege" of running a software package.
Commercializing OpenSourceSoftware... (Score:2)
Why are you looking at me like that?
License matters (Score:2, Insightful)
Forget about getting hired by those guys (Score:2)
You can write free software but you can't devote yourself to maintaining someone else's bottom line for free. Unfortunately, most companies use this against you and you find you can't get a job anywhere.
Had one company do that. They were royally pissed and went out of business because we didn't maint
Re:Slashdotted after 3 minutes (Score:5, Informative)
Commercializing Open Source Software
ACM Queue vol. 1, no. 5 - July/August 2003
by Michael J. Karels
Introduction
The use of open source software has become increasingly popular in production environments, as well as in research and software development. One obvious attraction is the low cost of acquisition. Commercial software has a higher initial cost, though it usually has advantages such as support and training. A number of business models designed by users and vendors combine open source and commercial software; they use open source as much as possible, adding commercial software as needed. They may use open source software as a central component of a product or service, but use other components to add value, which can then induce customers to pay for the offering (obviously, it is hard to compete with free software on price).
After a brief overview of the salient differences between open source and commercial software, this article will describe several basic business models in today's marketplace to highlight ways that value is added to open source software and services. For the most part, I will discuss only complete software systems sufficient for some useful purpose, such as network servers, which include an operating system and its associated components, any applications needed for the system's purpose, and necessary local configuration information. Many of the same principles apply to components such as applications and other software packages.
Open Source Development
The development process for open source software is often quite different from that of traditional commercial software. In some cases a single author or a small group may develop and distribute a program or system. Successful software often attracts additional developers, however, and larger projects generally require larger teams. These teams tend to be distributed, with participants in different locations and with different affiliations. Some members may contribute their own time; others may be paid to work on the project. Some projects develop infrastructure such as a consortium to coordinate the project; others work with a looser organization. In either case, projects are likely to be organized with less central control than in traditional software development. Some projects may have a strong central figure such as the initial author of the software, but many other projects have "outgrown" central control.
This less-centralized structure affects the development process for open source projects in several ways:
* Community support is often available via mailing lists associated with a project. Response ranges from rapid to nonexistent.
* Projects may have many volunteer contributors. Their abilities and availability can vary significantly.
* In terms of quality, Darwinism applies. Some software features may be added while the project is still incomplete or experimental. These features may eventually be removed or replaced, or they may be improved over time. The addition of features and other modifications is driven by the interests and wishes of the contributors (including companies that pay staff to extend open source software). As users of the software, these contributors have certain common interests in making the software stable and usable. They may have substantially different uses for the software, however, as well as different ideas about how the software should be engineered and extended. The direction taken by the software developers may be driven by those who have the most time to devote to development or by those with the greatest tolerance for the discussions on mailing lists for the project. When different groups design and implement the various subsystems, their architectures might not have similar or compatible styles.
* The open source process is inherently social and political. Group leaders spend as much time on organizational matters and conflict resolution as on technical issues