Is There Money in Open Source? | Hacker News Reader

Is There Money in Open Source?

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20 pointscwan12 comments

Red Hat makes tons of money providing the foundations from which alot of the stated technologies can operate: Linux OS, JBoss middleware, cloud and virtualization technology, and major support for the biggie databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL).

They're the guys selling the picks, sluice pans, and LAMPs (haha) for the gold miners.

Wait...Red Hat provides support for MySQL? The same Red Hat that is upset that Oracle (owner of MySQL) provides support for Red Hat (or a minor variant of Red Hat)? Interesting.

> Red Hat provides support for MySQL?

No. But it does have mysql packages in the distribution.

And MySQL don't receive any money from it, BTW.

There is definitely money providing services related to open source software, just as there is with providing services for closed source software.

Plenty of people make their living by doing installations, writing books, creating custom code (either internally or released to upstream), fixing bugs, deploying hardware with it preinstalled, and other things in common with any software project.

writing books

Really? I know some people who are amoung the most notable names in tech books, and almost none of them make a living from the books they write. What I usually hear is the book gets them in the door for speaking engagements and consulting, but the books themselves don't pay much of an hourly rate.

But I do agree that you can make a living with open source software, but you're not likely going to be able to get rich.

I got to co-author a book last year and it hasn't come close to even minimum wage yet.

OOS is a multi-billion dollar business.

Solr and Lucene are the largest search-related software today and Lucid Imagination provides services around it.

Redhat, IBM, Oracle, and even Facebook regularly release OSS and it's certainly related to huge profits it makes as well.

Don't forget SuSE, github, collabnet, wordpress, sonatype, sourceforge, and TONS more..

The list goes on and on, but yes, it's a different demographic and the economics work different - BUT there is TONS of money to be made in OSS.

There's certainly money in enterprise, but not so much for the hobbyist coders. If you or a small team make an app, you're not exactly going to survive off donations alone (my ~5500 user Chrome app has had all of two donations :| ).

While this article definitely was geared more toward the individual/hobbyist/"solving a problem" reader, its great to see a broader discussion of open source economics open up. For those individuals, which (if any) OS marketplaces do you guys prefer to use, or would you rather put something out on your own?

OpenERP's business model seems to work well. They have been growing 100% per year for the last 4 years.

http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/71059.html

Google Summer Of Code!

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