Business models for open source software

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Business models for open source software arise from the fact that open source software is widely used both as a stand-alone application and as a component in non-open source applications. Customers can be willing to use open technology on commercial terms (paying for open source software) if additional value is created. This can be the case through offered legal protection (e.g. exemption from liability for copyright or patent infringements), professional quality assurance or professional support / training / advice, which are otherwise typical for commercial software. In this case customers can continue to benefit from the advantages of open source software such as fine-grained control and a lack of lock-in effect. Open source software continues to be used as a component within proprietary, commercial products and services by many Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Value Added Resellers (VARs), and Hardware Vendors (OEMs or ODMs) in frameworks, modules and libraries.

approaches

Common open source compatible business models are dual licensing, software-as-a-service, the sale of support for a free product, freemium , donation-based financing and crowdfunding. The basic goal of these business models is to leverage the size and international reach of the open source community (typically more than an order of magnitude larger than a corresponding closed source model) for a sustainable commercial enterprise. The vast majority of commercial open source companies have a conversion ratio (as measured by the percentage of downloaders who buy something) well below 1%, so inexpensive and scalable marketing and sales functions are key to these companies' profitability.

Distribution of commercial services

The cost recovery for creating open source software can come from the sale of services such as training, technical support or advice, and not from the software itself. Another possibility is to offer open source software only as source code , while executable binary files are only made available to paying customers and thus to offer the commercial service of compiling and packaging the software. The provision of goods such as physical installation media (e.g. DVDs) can also be a commercial service.

Open source companies that use this business model successfully include Red Hat and IBM .

Sale of branded goods

Some open source organizations such as the Mozilla Foundation and the Wikimedia Foundation sell branded items such as t-shirts and coffee mugs. This can also be seen as an additional service for the user community.

Sale of certificates and trademark use

Another funding approach comes from Moodle , a community and learning platform . The business model is based on a network of sales partners who are certified and are therefore authorized to use the Moodle name and logo and in turn transfer part of the income to the Moodle Trust, which finances the core development.

Partnerships with funding organizations

In some cases, open source software is created through partnerships with particularly public organizations. When governments, universities, corporations or non-governmental organizations develop software in-house or use a contractor to make custom internal changes, this code is often released under an open source license. Some companies support the development of open source software through grants or grants, such as the Google Summer of Code, founded in 2005 .

Sale of optional proprietary extensions

Some companies sell proprietary but optional extensions ("modules", "plugins", or "add-ons") to an open source software product. This approach is a variant of the freemium business model. The proprietary software can aim to enable customers to get more value from their data, their infrastructure or their platform. B. operate more effectively, better manage or better secure. Examples are IBM's own Linux software, where IBM contributes to the Linux open source ecosystem, while IBM develops and sells database software, middleware and other software that runs on the open source core (to paying customers) . Other examples of proprietary products based on open source software include Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Cloudera's Apache Hadoop-based software. Some companies seem to be reinvesting some of their financial profits from selling proprietary software back into the open source infrastructure.

The approach can be problematic with many open source licenses ("not license-compliant") if not done carefully. For example, the mixing of proprietary code and open source license code in statically linked libraries or the merging of the entire source code in one software product can violate open source licenses, whereas if they are separated by interfaces or dynamic link libraries, they are often license-compliant stay.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dr. Karl Michael Popp, Ralf Meyer: Profit from Software Ecosystems: Business Models, Ecosystems and Partnerships in the Software Industry . Books on Demand, Norderstedt, Germany 2010, ISBN 9783839169834 .
  2. ^ Jack M. Germain: FOSS in the Enterprise: To Pay or Not to Pay? . ECT News Network, Inc. November 5, 2013. Retrieved June 18, 2016.
  3. ^ Paul Rubens: 6 Reasons to Pay for Open Source Software . CXO Media Inc .. February 13, 2013. Retrieved June 18, 2016: "Open source software is free to download, modify and use, but that doesn't mean it's not worth paying for sometimes. If you're using open source software in a commercial, enterprise capacity, here are six reasons why you should pay for free software. "
  4. ^ Robert McMillan: Red Hat Becomes Open Source's First $ 1 Billion Baby , Wired . March 28, 2012. Retrieved June 18, 2016. “Other companies have made big money selling Linux - Intel, IBM, Dell, and others have used it as a way to sell hardware and support services - but Red Hat has managed the tricky business of building a software platform that big businesses will pay for. " 
  5. ^ Gervase Markham: Mozilla Foundation Open Letter Orders Unofficial Mozilla Merchandise Sellers to Stop, Legal Action Hinted . March 16, 2004. Retrieved June 18, 2016.
  6. ↑ Wikipedia Store . Wikimedia Foundation. 2016. Retrieved June 18, 2016.
  7. ↑ Samantha Gartner: Moodle will always be an open source project . October 6, 2014. Retrieved June 18, 2016.
  8. ^ Martin Dougiamas: Moodle: a case study in sustainability . University of Oxford. January 22, 2014. Retrieved June 18, 2016.
  9. ↑ How do the Moodle Partners work? . 2012. Archived from the original on July 22, 2014. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 18, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / moodle.com
  10. ^ The Moodle Trademark . 2016. Retrieved June 18, 2016.
  11. ↑ Steve Kolowich: Blackboard's Open-Source Pivot . March 27, 2012. Retrieved June 18, 2016.
  12. ↑ Bruce Byfield: Google's Summer of Code concludes . linux.com . September 21, 2005. Retrieved June 18, 2016: “DiBona said that the SOC was designed to benefit everyone involved in it. Students had the chance to work on real projects, rather than academic ones, and to get paid while gaining experience and making contacts. FOSS projects benefited from getting new code and having the chance to recruit new developers. "
  13. ↑ Mike Olson, Cloudera (November 13, 2013). Opportunities Abound in the Big Data Space. Stanford eCorner. Stanford University.
  14. ^ Sprewell: Towards A Real Business Model For Open Source Software . April 29, 2010.
  15. ^ Eskild Hustvedt: Our new way to meet the LGPL . February 8, 2009. Archived from the original on February 20, 2009. Retrieved March 9, 2011: “You can use a special keyword $ ORIGIN to say 'relative to the actual location of the executable'. Suddenly we found we could use -rpath $ ORIGIN / lib and it worked. The game was loading the correct libraries, and so was stable and portable, but was also now completely in the spirit of the LGPL as well as the letter! "