January 23, 2010
How Free And Opensource People Make A Living?
I was wondering for several years how come Free and Opensource work, I’m also a big fan of php and mysql but how come people who developed those make a profit out of them (example: php and mysql). people who develop these should have something in return or how can they survive?
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Comments on How Free And Opensource People Make A Living? »
There are several ways they can do this.
1) Most of them have other paying jobs, their open source work is just voluntary.
2) Through donations and voluntary registration. People donate to keep the software free and can also register for a fee.
3) Registration gets you support. You have to pay for the support. Red Hat Linux pioneered this model. The software is free, but if you need support you have to register and pay for it.
4) Foundations and Trusts. This is how Mozilla operates. They are supported through the Mozilla foundation which is turn supported by other Corporate Contributors who have a vested interest in seeing the software spread. Google is a big contributor to the Mozilla foundation.
5) Parallel software. Some software vendors have a free or lite version of their software and then they have a paid of Deluxe version. This is how Sun Microsystems works with Star Office. Star Office is the corporate version of their software and Open Office is the free version, but under the hood they are the same.
You’re assuming that that’s all that they do. Some code in their spare time from other jobs. Some people/companies open source their code but charge for their services for specific tasks. Other people are sponsored by companies to work on open source projects. Some open source projects receive funding from well known IT companies.