The Economics of Open-Source

Some areas do lend themselves to the two-tier system more than others, so I am not sure open-source will continue to gain significant market through tiered payment levels. It works for enterprise offerings but not all open-source projects lend themselves to enterprise.

I think its almost more significant that in a post-piracy age (maybe we're not quite there yet), people seem to be increasingly willing to pay for something when they don't have to. I think open source may start to gain traction on a pay-what-you-want payment model, in the way that some musicians have.

The author forgot a different model: a bunch of small/medium companies work together to build a larger project, with hundreds of other companies and individuals making smaller contributions.

Our business is completely based on OpenERP, which is an AGPLv3 licensed web ERP created by a Belgium company (OpenERP SA) and with modules built and contributed by dozens of partners.

It works for us, since we get a free ERP we can build upon; it works for them, since they get contributions and support contracts from our larger clients. Win-win.

There is always going to be money in hosting/support/continued development of both open source and proprietary software. Dual license or not, people will pay money for these things.

"Using a dual-license model, with commercial licensing supporting the development of both community and enterprise versions. It’s a model that companies such as Redhat and MySQL used very effectively in building billion dollar businesses and enterprise grade products."

The statement seems true for infrastructure oriented open source projects (MongoDB etc.). For software applications that business users use, does a dual-license model hold true? I personally doubt it.