How do Open source products earn??
I have sometimes wondered, how do companies that rely on Open source earn? Talk of Linux, Linus Torvalds who developed this, what benefited him by giving such nice OS for free? Or other software product companies that that are on open source, how are these companies making money? And if they existing in the industry to do business, while giving out products for free, what business are they doing? I m not against open source, but business is about making money. If i start a business today and rely on open source, how am I going to have my bread and butter??
As IT people say, future is open source, does that means all the big companies needs to close down their business just cuz of open source, so where is business + making money going if companies have to close down, eg MS, Apple
Tagged with: apple • bread and butter • business today • linus torvalds • Linux • making money • Open Source • software product companies
Filed under: Open Source
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I dont think future is open source….if it is like that then future is far away….
I guess Open Source comanies benifits by donations or the companies that modifies the product to sell it as a comertial product…..
I guess some software products are free because :-
1) They took little efforts in developing it
2) They want to earn from other dependent product which are sold.
3) The product is very complex to handle by few peoples.
4) Fame
5) Ego with competitors.
6) Faster solution to programming problems by sharing expirience.
etc.
Well I wish these product would always be open source as my programming furure is dependent on it
They don’t although what normally happens is that companies like Novell will license "their" version of Linux very cheaply then they will charge for the required onsite help.
Linus Torvalds contracts himself out to companies who use Linux.
Linux in the enterprise is one of the bigger threats that MNS faces in terms of how much they can charge for apps that firms can download a Linux version of like Linux on an enterprise server – vs – Microsoft Server 2003 which is very expensive to license per user for a 500 user company.
Apple will never be forced to close down because of an OS like Linux – Macs run Linux too and Apple makes too many other devices to be affected by something like Linux which only accounts for about 1% of computers world wide. Aldo Apple is not aiming for the enterprise – they are more interested in schools and the home user and designers – not a strong area for Linux.
open source is mainly educational like university, college students and the project. earns the same way a school non profit earns. students pay school fees. most of these companies make money like java which gives away Solaris, Redhat which gives away Fedora. open source are also test products and developers contribute for the same reasons
They sell Linux pre-loaded on hardware, or they sell support services. Also, there are some retail versions of Linux. Linux will not eliminate either MS or Apple.