How does open-source software survive?
I understand that proprietary software companies charge fees for licenses and access to their product, and in that way, they support their development and continued existence, but open-source software does not do that. How is it that open-source software continues to be developed and perfected without a revenue stream? Or, is there a revenue stream of which I am unaware?
Firstly, you have to understand the spirit of open source; it’s about giving. It’s kind of like community service, you’re doing something for the sake of doing something good.
Now, where does the money come from?
Firstly, many open source developers do not do so full time. This applies to both main contributors and smaller contributors.
Secondly, open source projects accept donations. Yes, there is no requirement to donate, but many people opt to do so to keep such projects alive.
Additionally, many companies pay for support contracts (Ubuntu’s holding corp does this) which brings in $$$. Also, companies often contribute back to the open source community. They add code they like (and send it back to be put in the next version), fix bugs they find, and report any other errors they encounter. They will often donate money to keep an open source program viable and current too.
Companies also donate money, as a gesture of goodwill, to make sure the software is kept developing, and often, just to make sure there is an alternative to Microsoft. Keeping software like Openoffice.org helps to prevent Microsoft from overcharging or not adding features to their products. By keeping competitors alive, Microsoft and open source developers are always innovating to outdo each other, making computing evolve and making programs better. IBM and intel put a lot of resources into Linux & open source.
Hope this helps!
Many accept donations, which help. Others are developed by people who donate their time because they enjoy it or believe in the ideas. Some companies that make open source software distribute it for free but charge for support.
its developed by computer programers who volunteer their time. if you or I could program, we could contribute to the cause. pretty cool right?
Donations, such as Open Office. You are free to download and use it as much as you want, but they request a donation (you don’t have to donate they just ask).
Another thing to consider, is that people write software for their skills and personal interests. Then, they put that on their resume as an accomplishment. There is also self-esteem stuff, if you want to boost yourself but mainly people do it because they want to.
There is a revenue, but its solely based on donations. Believe it or not open source software is a multi million dollar deal per year.
The reason why it continues to develop, people like coming up with changes and like progressing programs in there spare time. In the future everything will be open-source or free on the net. You cant beat pirates so eventually they will join them.
some folks believe that spreading knowledge is not purely based on financial benefit.
OS works, (unlike windows) it is hugely popular, esp in the developing world, and unlike windows, Linux systems boot off a CD, its totally automated, seamless and stable…
and where else would you get a platform for software developers to learn their craft, and upload their work, and have it judged by their peers (thats us lot, the users)
There are different motivations for open source, or freeware even if it’s not open source. If I need a utility, and spend the time to write it, if I think others might be able to use it I’ll make it available for download. Sometimes someone here on Y!A aska about software to do something, and I have a program that does almost exactly what they want, so I’ll rewrite it a little and make it available.
And sometimes it’s for the challenge. Back in the late 80s, someone commented that it wasn’t possible to write a program to edit a particular kind of file. I took that as a personal challenge and wrote a program that could. (For anyone who remembers the old BBS Qmail program, it was UnQmail, or "Underwear", as one magazine editor – who shall remain UnNamed [you know who you are, Judy] – called it..)
Most of it is developed purely by volunteers. Many programmers however are paid to work on projects because the company which developed them need that project. Rather than try to do all of the development and testing work in house they open source it. In this way they get many good programmers working on the project for very low costs. Less than buying COTS software and instead of attempting to force the company to adapt to the author’s business model as most COTS software does, the company can write software which adapts to it’s business model.
Many of the world’s biggest companies use open source software to create much larger projects. IBM, Sun, Oracle, Redhat and such put millions back into open source projects and contribute code. There are very few companies like Microsoft which take open source but return little or no code back. It doesn’t make business sense to do so. By sharing the work the companies are able to pursue the more lucritive consulting aspect of the business and leave the tedious and expensive debugging and testing aspect to the open source community.
You are using open source servers for example to ask this question. Yahoo uses BSD for it’s servers. BSD is an open source product. Yahoo contributes code back to the open source community as well.. Not nearly as much as Google, but quite a bit. The US government and other world governments also contribute lots of work to the open source community. They benefit from the very low cost of ownership, improved security and customization and as such they contribute back to that community.
Without open source Microsoft operating systems could not have joined the internet for example. The TCP/IP stack is open source. If it’d been propriatary then you would have had to buy an expensive piece of software to connect to the net. Think about how much that would have retarded the growth of the computing industry? Open source is a business model for dynamic companies that have real ideas and innovations. It is a sharing of knowledge to create ever more complex projects without having to write the whole thing from scratch yourself. So me I can’t understand why anybody is attempting to write software that isn’t open source any more. You can use open source for your base, contribute back to the community and make your money off your special additions. Less work for a better product and more profitability.
Well, true enough, volunteers and donations figure heavily in keeping Open Source projects moving forward. But there are many different factors in keeping projects afloat, and solid revenue streams are responsible much more often than most people would think.
Charges for support, box packages and educational activities keep many companies afloat on the basis of Open Source software such as Linux, osCommerce, SugarCRM and many other popular applications. Open Source is not free software as in free of charge. It is free as in freedom. Freedom to redistribute, freedom to alter the code, freedom to USE the code. But, when people expend time and energy – they can certainly charge for it.
These options may vary from one Open Source license to another – but they do exist.