Sunday, July 20, 2008

How developers/companies are earning money from Open Source environment?

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) need not a free of cost. We can earn money in some ways from Open Source softwares by directly and indirectly.

* Hope you know, we dont have any official supports for Open Source softwares. Take a OS s/w; Sale it with free of cost for your customer. When they want support, you just charge some money.
* One important drawback in OS is, no ready made development environment and taking more time duration for setting up a environment. if you will do every thing in a single package, then you can earn more money from OS. For example, still we dont have any ready made working environment for embedded linux. We have to install more tools and need to configure lot of things. Its an nightmare for developers. If you possible to collect all the tools, configure it and ready for sale, you can earn more money, I m sure.
* You can also earn money by teaching OS tools and softwares, like provide training.
* You can also earn money by providing installation setup/supports for an company/organizations. CDAC is d example in this case. They are doing this business for all the government org from BOSS linux.
* My-sql is an open source DB. Recently, Mr.Brain [Owner of mq-sql]sale his OS project MY-AQL to another company for some millions. But it took around 6 years for earn this money from his open source project.
* Sale a OS operating system CD/DVD is an good business and more…

Why the companies are starting a OS software
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You may ask this question, definitely. Now we can see why a company/developer start an OS project.
* You will get more contributions from community. So that your product will be stable soon.
* Get more contribution from community. You no need to recruit more people for this project.
* Google encourage more OS activities like Google SOC and this is the best example company for earning more money from OS by directly and indirectly.
* Intel have a big OS community. So that they are getting contributions for writing drivers for their processors. They have lots of other OS projects too, http://oss.intel.com/en-us/
* NOKIA, have a OS community. Initially they started with couple of OS projects. Now they have more than 25 projects in a short period. Through this OS activity, they are getting more contributions for their application development and others. visit http://opensource.nokia.com/
* {After NOVELL earned more bad issues from communities, once tied with Microsoft} Now AMD supports OpenSUSE project, http://www.opensuse.org/
* nVidia have a OS community and they are getting more contributions for writing drivers for their devices.
* There are lots of companies are having OS activities. Coz, they are getting credits indirectly, compare with what they are earning money by directly.

* For more details about Open Source business plan refer this link, http://www.opensource.org/advocacy/case_for_business.php

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