[ubuntu-za] Ubuntu and Mozilla, the inevitable alliance

[Charl Wentzel]

On Mon, 2010-01-18 at 14:17 +0200, Hilton Gibson wrote:
> 
> Does anybody on the list have ideas on a sustainable financial
> business model for open source software projects ?
> 
Hi Hilton

You'll find a lot of articles on the matter, but in short you have three
ways:

1. Licenced open source.  Use of the software and code is restricted to
those who buy it from you.  Once they've bought it from you they can
modify the code, but customers seldom do as they generally don't have
the inhouse skills.  

2. Support.  Give the software away and sell support.  Again few
companies have the skills to maintain software themselves.  And the few
companies that can pay for support are usually sufficient to support
you.

3. Mixed source.  Some companies (like SUN) have different versions of
the some software, open and closed source.  The open source is usually
slightly behind and the closed source the cutting edge.  They push
development into the closed source version and then push some of it back
to the open source version.  They also borrow from the open source input
to help develop the closed source version.

Open source is a leap of faith but it has plenty benefits:

1. Free/low cost software get recognised much faster.  The install base
will grow faster and bring more income in a shorter amount of time

2. You customers are more relaxed, since they know that should something
happen to you, they can always get someone else to support the software.

3. Those who do maintain your software, often contribute back, so you
get further development work for free.

It's not so much "risky" as it is "different", and "different" usually
feels scary, even if it is not.

Charl