An essay by John Melonakos
Monetizing Open Source Products
Most open source projects never make money and die. However, some become very successful monetarily. Here are ways businesses monetize open source products:
- Government grants
- Sponsorship from benefactors
- Support contracts
- License sales for variants of the open source work, or particular customer types or usage classes
- Services sold, using the open source product as a lead generator
- User conferences
- Subscriptions to platforms that run the open source code
In our accelerated computing space, nearly all the open source code is problematic. It is not well-tested. The best software in our space is all still closed source.
What examples do you know of companies that have become very successful with open source business models? What other open source business models are there?