Where's the money come from?

[Ek0nomik]

All os us should see a movie called "Reolution OS"!

Click here to watch it on Google Video.

That movie could answer some of our questions.

Awesome link. Thanks.

[Ek0nomik]

I don't really understand how an open source project can roll in profits. Red Hat is open source, yes? How do they make a profit out of open source software? Obviously not everyone can have access to the code, because otherwise their business strategy would be shot. How does that work out? Who gets access to the source code?

Also, with open source projects, how does one really even get access to the code? Ubuntu as an example. How does one go about getting access to some of the Ubuntu code?

[maniacmusician]

All the code for Ubuntu is in the repositories.

Red Hat also releases all of its source code. However, they do offer commercial support, mostly at the corporate level. That's their main source of income. They service machines, do installations, provide support for extended periods of time, etc

A company can also charge for the version of the distro that they give you. For example, when you get Ubuntu, everything is already compiled and configured for you. If they wanted, Canonical could charge you for the compilation and configurations that they've done. They spent countless hours piecing together pieces of software to create a distro. They would still be open source, because you could compile it all yourself if you wanted to, and it wouldn't cost you a penny.

[aysiu]

The thread I've merged you with can answer some of your questions.

You may also want to check out these links:
How to make money from Open source
How to Make Money Off Open Source
Making Money from Free Software
101 Ways to Make Money off Open Source
How Do You Make Money from Open Source Software?
Making money with open source
Using open source to make money on generic PCs
Open source turns money-spinner
Canonical seeks profit from free Ubuntu

[cowlip]

I heard at Mark Shuttleworth's presentation from debconf available from Google Video that they want money from infrastructures like Launchpad, support ecosystems where they're the upstream for local support systems (unlike Red Hat and Novell which off their own support all the way down), and I guess possibly commercial support, but apparently they don't see it as a big money maker. He likened Canonical's future to a country's reserve bank, not a big money maker but offering unique services.

At the time this was recorded though, bazaar/bzr was predicted to be a "big" thing, while today it seems that git is taking over that space--so I don't know what the goals are now.