Open source and making money

[phrostbyte]

Do you think open source can be profitable with today's laws and economics?

What is more profitable: open source or proprietary (non-open source) development models.

What kind of laws or system can be created to make open source more profitable and rewarding to develop?

[23meg]


Do you think open source can be profitable with today's laws and economics?

I don't think there's any need to discuss this; it's too widely proven that it can to be worth discussing.


What is more profitable: open source or proprietary (non-open source) development models.

One isn't necessarily more profitable overall. The amount of profit a business will make depends on many factors, among which choice of development model is just one. There's no way to discuss this without resorting to vast generalizations.

[davahmet]

I think Red Hat, Sugar CRM, Alfresco, Google and Canonical all say yes, just to name a few. More and more companies are jumping on the open source band wagon everyday, not because of any trendy development speculations, but because their are some definite economic advantages.

Closed, proprietary systems rely on a shrink-wrapped perception of value ownership that worked well when value retention was centered on development and distribution. Back in the days when most solutions were either customized implementations or from a very limited pool of vendors, software value was on just getting a solution, so obfuscating the code was a way to protect the value.

As software development became more cost efficient, the value shifted to support. This change in software economies means that the closed development model runs on tighter profit margins, approaching the point of operating at a loss. The most efficient way to cut these costs is to invite outside expertise to collaborate in development and distribution. Since very few developers will provide such service without something in return, the logical solution is to open the code for collaboration and shift the value point to support services.

[az]

Do you think open source can be profitable with today's laws and economics?


Only a small percentage of software developers today work for a company that sells a shrink-wrapped software product. The vast majority of developers earn their pay by writing code that is not then distributed as proprietary code.
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/doc/2006-11-20-flossimpact.pdf




What is more profitable: open source or proprietary (non-open source) development models.

Are you looking at it from an individual's point of view or from a society's point of view?

From an individual's point of view, if you want to make large sums of money from software, don't become a programmer, but become a lawyer.



What kind of laws or system can be created to make open source more profitable and rewarding to develop?

Outlaw binary-only code. Make it illegal to distribute software without letting the user have the right to know exactly what that code does.

However, a law is not necessary. I think the market will demand that soon enough. I don't think you need a law to orient the marketplace like that.

[garret]

The single biggest problem in today's software world is software patents. Get rid of software patents and you'll have a level playing.

Open source software can survive on it's own, as can the business of open source software. The real question is how the little guy makes it in open source software? How does he protect what he does, if he can protect it at all.

Back in the day there were many options for a company trying to make a go at software development, and still are in the closed source world. IN the open source world I think we are limited. Canonical is not a realistic model because of the funding available. Red Hat is neither, as a lot of their income that helped them survive actually came from smart investments. Now JBoss, Sugar and a couple of others like that are pretty good examples of open source companies today. Both have basically done the same thing, JBoss a bit ahead of the curve. Build the FOSS product, advertise the heck out of it, build huge communities, get venture funding . . . .get acquired.

I think that's today's realistic open source model.

Garret
http://ruffdogs.com

[zazuge]

Well that's a criticaly important subject.
sorry for posting on this old thread but i felt like i have to add a little something.
like davahmet said opensource in itself is an important edge.
for me before i were an IT guy i was a user, to win the market u have to win every user individualy
to win a user in this age of globalisation, old specific solutions arn't workin well (M$ apps penetraded and erroded that market) so u have to give a more attractive solution, and here opensource comes to play, but the problem is informing users.
and the other think is that startups can't survive in the IT field for long, they have to win expenential market shares or they I'll disapear, with opensource u can win users from others for free, so it's a good edge for little startups that don't have budget for that ogre called marketing.
here is a link that talks a lot about this new approach on market brought by opensource, every chapter is written by diffirent person , you'll find RMS and L.Torvald too ;-)
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/tiemans.html

[uraldinho]

I think Red Hat, Sugar CRM, Alfresco, Google and Canonical all say yes, just to name a few.

Since when are Google open source experts? I know they use lots of linux in their data centre but they haven't released any consumer product that is open source.

If they were such open source supporters they could start by releasing their search algorithms.

[p_quarles]

Since when are Google open source experts? I know they use lots of linux in their data centre but they haven't released any consumer product that is open source.
Except for Android. And, you know, the second largest open source code hosting site in the world.

Google has definitely placed its bets on open source. That doesn't -- nor should it have to -- mean that everything they do is GPLed. But they definitely make a good case for the compatibility of open code and profit.

[id1337x]

Since when are Google open source experts? I know they use lots of linux in their data centre but they haven't released any consumer product that is open source.

What about Android and tons of JS API's that are FOSS? Google definitely contributes to the Open Source community considerably in addition there is their standards contributions just look at excanvas which they now run...

[uraldinho]

What about Android and tons of JS API's that are FOSS? Google definitely contributes to the Open Source community considerably in addition there is their standards contributions just look at excanvas which they now run...

Google is not a FOSS company and never will be, their core business is one of the most closed businesses in the world. They support FOSS projects to create a community and harm MS market share. For them it's about getting people onto the Google bandwagon, and part of that goes through having a good integration through closed or open source software. It's a business model.

As for the Android. It's not FOSS yet, and it may never be. There are lots of questions surrounding it. Wait and see, too early to comment.

Quote: But they definitely make a good case for the compatibility of open code and profit.

yes they make a good case of how to hide all the details of your core business.

[az]

"An open source company" can mean many things. Google need to use free/libre open source software since it's not possible to achieve what they have achieved by waiting for someone else to write their code.

Google simply would not be in business if they relied on proprietary software made by a third-party to build their service. Google is actually a great example of how powerful F/LOSS is. You need a computer to do something so you can either buy a program that does an adequate job or write it yourself and make is do exactly what you need.

Depending on the job you need to get done, one development model may provide more value than the other.