# Open source business models - do they work?



## Beastie7 (May 20, 2015)

I've recently stumbled across a  video  about whether "open source" is a viable business model. They seem to conflate "open source" with the GPL or Linux (from their own description) and derive their conclusion of it not working from the constraints of copyleft licensing and the outcomes of Linux (or remotely Linux) based companies. A couple other hint that proprietary is the only way to grow a business and make money. Which is extremely irritating because there's a lot of open source business out there that are successful using permissive licenses.

I honestly think open source does work very well. To me there's a fine grey area with this issue. I see two fronts here; open source as a development model, and open source as a business model.

Companies using both (ie. iX, EDB, NGINX, etc) are probably good examples of using both. While the majority the huge companies using the former for open source. (ie, Apple, Juniper, etc)

Also, one person in the videos concludes that since the code is open for a particular product, anyone can take it and give it away. I think it's more complicated than that, with issues like branding, trademarks, etc? (ie. the whole pfSense/OPNsense debacle).

What do you guys think? Does it work? The video is a bit long, but some of their comments just irked me because they seem to be missing the point of other extremely important motives behind open source, especially for the enterprise.


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## drhowarddrfine (May 20, 2015)

75% of the internet runs on open source software and Google, Facebook, RedHat and Netflix seem to have done well for themselves using it.

I haven't watched the video so, on the surface, I don't understand what the discussion is about.

EDIT: Wow! These guys are about 10 years or more behind the times! I don't know who they are but I'd bet they are strictly big corporate types with a COBOL background. And they call GNU, G-N-U.


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## kpa (May 20, 2015)

Mozilla Firefox is a trademarked application with source code completely available and nobody seems to make fuss about it, why was pfSense so special?


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## NewGuy (May 20, 2015)

Selling open source software usually doesn't work well, but using open source software to sell a platform, service or related products frequently works well. Red Hat makes a lot of money selling support for RHEL, iXsystems does okay selling support for FreeBSD, Google and Canonical stand to make money (indirectly) from advertising and other services related to their mobile/server/cloud platforms. Projects like Linux Mint make a small profit by giving away open source software and asking for donations. An above poster pointed out Mozilla makes money from Firefox because they can get ad revenue from search queries.

Open source can definitely be profitable, so long as you have something extra to sell or a service that extends to original, free software.


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## Beastie7 (May 21, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> 75% of the internet runs on open source software and Google, Facebook, RedHat and Netflix seem to have done well for themselves using it.
> 
> I haven't watched the video so, on the surface, I don't understand what the discussion is about.
> 
> EDIT: Wow! These guys are about 10 years or more behind the times! I don't know who they are but I'd bet they are strictly big corporate types with a COBOL background. And they call GNU, G-N-U.



Yeah, they seem like the type of guys who thinks IT resolves around the big old enterprise dinosaurs like MS/Oracle/IBM, negating all of the successful web companies and SMBs who sell/utilize open source software. I just wish people would stop conflating "open source" with the GPL or GNU/Linux, and realize it isn't the only option/platform under the umbrella term for business.


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