Making money from Open Source Software

tommed · 2010-04-13 08:48:20

Hi Guys,

I'm thinking of committing a cardinal sin and charging for some software I have been writing. Before I am executed by an angry mob (with pitch-forks) I wanted to explain why..

I want to work with OS Software as my main career. My main aim is to create a company which can help start-up companies with their IT infrastructure. I am developing a system (which uses Arch Linux as the base-OS) which is similar to eBox (but is much more Windows and Mac friendly... including Single Sign On authentication for all clients); so these companies can save thousands (and sometime tens of thousands) of dollars/pounds on licensing and expensive hardware. (My system currently only required 256MB RAM and runs much faster than Winblows!).

But herein lies my problem. If my system is based around MIT/GPL software such as Kerberos, DNSMasq, IPTables, LDAP etc... how can I make any money from it?

What I'd like to do is to be hands on and go in and setup the systems myself; so I could charge labor and not have to invest a great deal of time on my own infrastructure (ie. making it idiot proof); but as getting software running on Arch is so trivial; I don't think I could sustain a business on this alone.

I also read somewhere about a company who wrapped up Open Office.org and Firefox in an OS and sold it. It stuff like this legal? How do they get around selling something which is unmodified versions of OS software???

My other option is a support contract for each company; which is probably my best option. I charge for a days labor for the initial installation (after topology designs have been signed-off) and then charge the company yearly for 24/7 support.

Does anyone have experience making a living from FOSS? Does anyone have any suggestions or warnings for me?

I'd love to keep my software open source; but I'd also like to eat! :S

Thanks,
tommed

Infinity717 · 2010-04-13 10:22:59

tommed wrote:

I'd love to keep my software open source; but I'd also like to eat! :S

Well, where is /your/ software, /your/ copyright? I don't see any.

Charging for open source software is not illegal in any way and you can always dual license your work.

tommed · 2010-04-13 10:30:03

Well, where is /your/ software, /your/ copyright? I don't see any.

This particular project isn't live because I haven't chosen a license yet. But I have plenty of open source software on Github (username tommed) and various other places (see www.tommed.co.uk).

Thanks for the tip on dual-licensing. I will have to look into this too. I'm guessing any patches I write for any GPL software (for example) will need to be available under the same license as it's a modification/derivative of that software, but any infrastructure code I write myself can be licensed any way I see fit?

Also, if I write a patch for a GPL project... do I *have* to make my patch publicly available?

Last edited by tommed (2010-04-13 10:31:17)

JohannesSM64 · 2010-04-13 11:04:13

You need to read up:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

tommed · 2010-04-13 11:08:19

Many thanks JohannesSM64

zenlord · 2010-04-13 13:19:02

Our SOHO is managed by myself for the daily tasks, but I give the real administration of our network (installing, upgrading, debugging, adding new features etc.) to a self-employed Debian developer.

He has set us up a system like the one you describe: Kerberos, LDAP, NFS, mail, asterisk etc. He has only charged us for the work he has spent making this happen. From our off-the-record-talks I gather that he does varying stuff, so it wouldn't pay off for him to spend time in making a solution for 1 case (admittedly, a case that you could easily adapt for other projects)

Myself I'm writing a program in PHP to manage our office. It's more of a single frontend for all the free software that we are using already. I'm planning on the long term to release this frontend in a free license, only charging people for the cost to set it up and to maintain it.

I'm by no means a GPL-specialist, but I think this is the way to do this.

karol · 2010-04-13 13:34:15

Even Arch and Arch-related things can be made better - single login to all the services: wiki, forums etc.
You can provide various services related to FLOSS: double-check all the software (does it run, any regressions, new features = new training, adding new pages to the company's intranet wiki etc.), provide a custom repo for your customers, create sth like Arch Server: only stable software, non-rolling release, !docs, lean and mean. If you know your customers' needs and get a large enough number of companies to work w/ you - it may fly.
Watch out for the Chromium OS though ;-)

> charge the company yearly for 24/7 support.
Do you know about SLA and stuff? If you sign a contract to provide a 24/7 support but you really meant 9-17 mon-fri, you're gonna get your ass sued big time.

axel668 · 2010-04-13 14:00:27

Of course you can build proprietary tools on a GPLed system and charge for the system as a whole, actually that's what companies like RedHat, Novell and Oracle are doing. Another way is to provide Enterprise support for customers (like e.g. Canonical). You can do a project with each of your customers and then bill them for consulting, which means you just get paid for the time you spend exactly for that customer ...

the possibilities are almost endless, the important thing is, that you offer added value to the customer (better reliability / uptime, lower TOC, ...) and even more important get them to UNDERSTAND the business use of your solution.

ngoonee · 2010-04-13 23:06:23

Open source simply means the source is freely available. Why can't you charge money for it? Nerds like most of those here wouldn't pay for it, but for every user with know-how you'd maybe have 10 who would pay you just so they don't have to learn.

karol · 2010-04-29 12:08:31

This is not an advertising. I just got this in the mail and thought it fits nicely in this topic:
http://aarddict.org/forum/index.php?topic=449.0

Ranguvar · 2010-04-29 20:00:47

I just came so close to reporting you for advertising, until I saw your post count, register date, and re-read your message and the link

karol · 2010-04-29 20:16:32

Ranguvar wrote:

I just came so close to reporting you for advertising, until I saw your post count, register date, and re-read your message and the link

LOL

Well, I don't mind if a forum Admin will remove it - I know it's a slippery slope.
I honestly didn't mean harm, I just wanted to show some ways some people are trying to leverage FLOSS (or free / open content) to make some money.

Ranguvar · 2010-04-29 20:34:21

karol wrote:

Ranguvar wrote:
I just came so close to reporting you for advertising, until I saw your post count, register date, and re-read your message and the link
LOL
Well, I don't mind if a forum Admin will remove it - I know it's a slippery slope.
I honestly didn't mean harm, I just wanted to show some ways some people are trying to leverage FLOSS (or free / open content) to make some money.

Oh, no, it was a good link.
Just looked seedy at first until I realized the relevance, heh.

nixpunk · 2010-05-03 13:21:09

I always wanted to own my own personal Italian Wikipedia!

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-13 08:48:20

Making money from Open Source Software

#2 2010-04-13 10:22:59

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

#3 2010-04-13 10:30:03

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

#4 2010-04-13 11:04:13

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

#5 2010-04-13 11:08:19

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

#6 2010-04-13 13:19:02

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

#7 2010-04-13 13:34:15

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

#8 2010-04-13 14:00:27

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

#9 2010-04-13 23:06:23

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

#10 2010-04-29 12:08:31

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

#11 2010-04-29 20:00:47

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

#12 2010-04-29 20:16:32

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

#13 2010-04-29 20:34:21

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

#14 2010-05-03 13:21:09

Re: Making money from Open Source Software

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