Three types of business models for open source software

Open source software generally has a good community, and the use of distributed software engineering system, the system has been quite perfect and constantly updated, continuous operation. Most open source projects are based on the selfless contribution of open ideas, but many open-source projects are commercially operational and have been hugely successful.
Open source software business model, personal summary of the current can be divided into three categories:

1, fully open source, through the foundation operation, funds mainly from donations.

This kind of open source organization large-scale essentially has formed an alliance, the common control technology industry's discourse power and the dominant position. such as Apache and Linux, Linaro, are IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and other large companies behind the support. Huawei donates about $4 million annually to the Linaro Foundation, primarily for Android performance optimizations on the arm and arm of Linux.

The small scale is mainly based on interest and research projects, and generally conducts consulting projects and customized projects to gain revenue and visibility. These projects tend to be short-term, either to find a backer, to get support from some of the foundations above, or to own a foundation. Or into a commercial process.

2. We also provide community and commercial editions.

The community version is open source, free and available for the latest modules, but does not provide any protection. The commercial version is closed source and charges, the difference is: to provide quality testing, bug fixes, performance optimization, value-added features, technical support and other business users interested in the ability. This Community edition is primarily developed, studied, experimented with, and is suspected of infringing copyright if it is used in commercial activities that often encounter bug/performance/capacity issues.

This model is equivalent to using the power of the community to give themselves free development and testing, project sponsors only do community operations and product-based work. Of course, the risk is that other people get to the source code, can also open the same or even better products. But in foreign countries, the code is copyrighted, and if so, other people need to pay licensing fees, may be more than their own products to make money. Generally these community editions are licensed, and commercial use is subject to additional authorization.

Chinese people generally think that open source is free, this concept is completely wrong to understand. All open source software is copyrighted and therefore requires permission to be used, and licensing often has many additional conditions. For example, the famous GPL, which is the largest, but requires all users to use their resources must also be all open source, and use the same GPL protocol, so called "virus-type license."

3, do the independent listing, or the product was acquired by commercial companies.

This kind of is now a lot of, internet companies with some things and hardware and software combination of equipment, often the source code open. Since the open source agreement does not limit the rights of the original author, often the software succeeds in commercialization and the source code is abandoned and no longer maintained. Some communities will maintain the abandoned code, but weak and will receive the crackdown of the takeover company, most typical of intellectual property rights and patent claims, it is difficult to continue. If Openni turned out to be open source, it has now been acquired by Apple, and Java has been acquired by Oracle and is recently suing Google for infringement.

Open source is a kind of engineering form which is more advantageous to software development, which is beneficial to software updating, maintenance and integration, which is beneficial to the training of software talents and cross-regional cooperation, etc. But openness is the biggest monopoly, and when we choose an open source software, all subsequent developments must be subject to their technical system, standard specifications, and open source software as a de facto standard to be complied with.

The essence of software is the integration of intellectual resources, the focus of protection is intellectual property, and the relationship with morphology is not very large. Westerners have long said: "There is no free lunch", if the choice of mouth life, also chose the end of the whole of the slaughter. Hope that "procedural ape" can become pig-raising, can successfully develop their own open-source software.

[Gift Rose, hand to leave the fragrance; original articles, welcome reprint. ］

Three types of business models for open source software