Everyone has heard about open source software, and more often than not, we use this kind of software without realizing it. But to a broke college student like me (doing a CS degree)I look for these “free” software to come to my aid.
Recently, the question I have found myself asking while using open-source software is " how do these open source projects manage to stay afloat? "
How demand and supply fuel commercial software development
Inside economics, there is this concept of demand and supply. The concept of demand and supply is simple. It maps the relation of the presence of a commodity to how many people want the commodity.
In other words, demand is what fuels the innovation and feasibility of a product. The model represents if there is a niche community the people wanting to invest in it are low therefore the price of the product is kept high to compensate for the lack of investment.
Traditionally, a profitable company must be able to sell their products for them to well operate for a longer time. But that isn’t the case with the open-source software spectrum.
How does open-source make money?
Most open-source projects generally begin with people solving their problems and choosing to share their code online. They don’t charge for the reuse of their source code but look for alternatives to make money. e.g. Linux.
Primarily :
- Support
- Hosting
- Restrictive licensing
- Hybrid licensing
- Open-core
You can read more about them here
Signing off
“How do these open-source software make money” is a great question to ask ourselves. For multiple reasons, if we want to work on an open-source start-up, adopt open source software or establish a working business. We do need it to be well sustainable. Open-source software has no cost associated with the usage of source code it has to rely on other factors
Like any other business, open-source software has its own set of challenges to be made into a reliable business. But the important thing to recognize is the modern software industry has endless possibilities. there are lots of ways to make money in software
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