MESSAGE
| DATE | 2015-06-02 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
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| SUBJECT | Re: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] making money with open source - John Walker
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Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben.safir-at-my.liu.edu):
> The key to making money with free Software and ALL software is the ole
> Service Contract.
Tunnel vision.
Quoting an OSI essay from around 1998:
Four Ways To Win
Now for a higher-level, investor's point of view. There are at least
four known business models for making money with open source:
Support Sellers (otherwise known as "Give Away the Recipe, Open A
Restaurant"): In this model, you (effectively) give away the software
product, but sell distribution, branding, and after-sale service. This
is what (for example) Red Hat does.
Loss Leader: In this model, you give away open-source as a loss-leader
and market positioner for closed software. This is what Netscape is
doing.
Widget Frosting: In this model, a hardware company (for which software
is a necessary adjunct but strictly a cost rather than profit center)
goes open-source in order to get better drivers and interface tools
cheaper. Silicon Graphics, for example, supports and ships Samba.
Accessorizing: Selling accessories - books, compatible hardware,
complete systems with open-source software pre-installed. It's easy to
trivialize this (open-source T-shirts, coffee mugs, Linux penguin dolls)
but at least the books and hardware underly some clear successes:
O'Reilly Associates, and SSC are among them.
http://opensource.org/advocacy/case_for_business.php
A lot more at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-source_software#Approaches
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