Open source software that costs money

Therefore, we made parts of the software as premium features that need to be paid for. With this, you actively support the maintenance and further rapid development of the product. If you have any questions about this or would like to chat with us, please do not hesitate to get in touch. The definitions and concepts in this article are not new. I have summarized existing ideas. Here are the sources and further reading inspiration: What is free software?

Find out about the OpenProject premium features to boost your project management. Find out how to get maintenance and support for OpenProject in your organization. Product Features. Product resources. Imprint Legal information Data privacy. Enter organization name. What is free and open source software and why can it cost money?

Published by Birthe Lindenthal July 13, Most people, when they think of open source software, imagine enthusiastic and generous developers who spend their days and nights creating software for free. But today there are ways to profit from building open source software OSS. Lately, developers have started thinking about how to monetize their OSS.

We're going to highlight a few common ways to make profits from open source software. One way to monetize your open source project is by using the SaaS business model. This option makes sense if you have a fully-fledged application capable of generating demand. What makes SaaS attractive is that the software is stored in the cloud; users only need a web browser to access an application. SaaS is a popular business model for vendors that build tools for HR, collaboration, content management, and project management.

SaaS solutions with a free codebase reduce development costs and eliminate the need to build redundant functionality. Additionally, the vibrant OSS community will gladly promote quality open source products. With an OpenSaaS model, software is purchased via subscriptions, which can offer varying levels of service.

For example, you might offer technical support, software customization, and trainings as package options. The SaaS version of WordPress can be found at wordpress. If you choose this service, then WordPress hosts your application for you. Sharetribe, a marketplace builder, is another great example of an OpenSaaS product.

It comes in two versions: a self-hosted free version which can be found on GitHub, and a cloud-based hosted version at sharetribe. But while the SaaS version receives great support and additional offerings like custom domain and removal of Sharetribe branding, this version of Sharetribe is less customizable, only allowing you to personalize marketplace filters and change colors, images, and block position in the user interface.

With the open source version of Sharetribe, on the other hand, the customer has to deploy Sharetribe on their own server and run updates and backups themselves. OpenSaaS is an exciting new trend that combines the best of both worlds, allowing people to build web experiences more easily than ever. Such as technical support, certifications, and trainings. In fact, most professional open source companies — including Red Hat, JBoss, and MySQl — have built their entire business by providing free solutions.

They generate profits only from additional services. The most common way to get revenue from OSS is to provide paid support. Red Hat sets the bar for this model, boasting substantial revenue. In , the company — widely known for its enterprise operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux — announced a profit of 2. Red Hat does admirably by selling yearly subscriptions for user and technical support. Customers can choose a subscription plan based on number of requests, severity of requests, support channels and hours of coverage.

MySQL, the leading open source database, derives revenue from selling support subscriptions for their product. Paid support is an effective tool for making profit from open source for a few reasons. Although open source is free and easy to obtain, and despite its growing popularity, there are still some stumbling blocks below the surface that can affect your business. TCO reflects a measurement of all the costs of identifying and acquiring software, installing it, operating it and the exit costs found in migrating away from the software.

It also reflects, not just the balance of the direct qualities of competing software products price, functionality, reliability etc. Selection, Acquisition, Integration, Use and Retirement. Obviously the cost of software itself is the most significant factor and the easiest to estimate, with cost of maintenance and upgrades coming second and cost of contracted support, third.

Factors that are less easy to asses are in the domain of organizational change and exit costs as well as in the establishment of appropriate in-house services. At the very least, hardware must be acquired to run the software and that costs money. Also, there is a cost in training staff to support the new application. When all is said and done, one needs to compare how much money the open source solution actually saved compared to the total sum.

There are various considerations that must be taken into account when assessing the benefit of open source to your company. Image credit.