Discussion: How Open Source Development is Funded

[JacquesR]

Community Blog Post:

How Open Source Development is Funded
15 Feb 2010 Written by Elin Waring

In early 2009 the Community Oversight Committee (also known as the core team) sent the OSM board a message that began:

"The Core Team would like OSM to investigate and report on the feasibility of creating some sort of company which can deal with the financial issues currently facing the project.
• as a means of handling revenue and expenditure needed by the project without sacrificing OSM's non-profit nature.
• as a means of attracting or developing new funding sources.
• to make it easier to disburse funds to individuals and organisations to compensate them for work performed which furthers the goals of the project."

The board spent most of 2009 considering how to respond to this in the context of our responsibilities as a non profit board, which are different from the responsibilities of COC members or other people involved in the Joomla! Project. ...

Full blog post here:
http://community.joomla.org/blogs/commu ... unded.html

You can discuss the blog post further in this thread. (or post your comments to the blog, if you prefer)

As it is a topic on which various people have strong opinions, I request that we debate this topic in a respectful manner, and agree that we will most likely not all agree!

[peskyhuman]

Community Blog Post:

How Open Source Development is Funded
15 Feb 2010 Written by Elin Waring

In early 2009 the Community Oversight Committee (also known as the core team) sent the OSM board a message that began:

"The Core Team would like OSM to investigate and report on the feasibility of creating some sort of company which can deal with the financial issues currently facing the project.
• as a means of handling revenue and expenditure needed by the project without sacrificing OSM's non-profit nature.
• as a means of attracting or developing new funding sources.
• to make it easier to disburse funds to individuals and organisations to compensate them for work performed which furthers the goals of the project."

The board spent most of 2009 considering how to respond to this in the context of our responsibilities as a non profit board, which are different from the responsibilities of COC members or other people involved in the Joomla! Project. ...

Full blog post here:
http://community.joomla.org/blogs/commu ... unded.html

You can discuss the blog post further in this thread. (or post your comments to the blog, if you prefer)

As it is a topic on which various people have strong opinions, I request that we debate this topic in a respectful manner, and agree that we will most likely not all agree!

This is a difficult task, since Open Source is almost non-proft in nature. What about merchandising efforts (T-shirts etc...) do they bring in much?

Maybe some sort of Open Source Certification where people pay to sit the exam to be qualified? (I know this is a pretty out there idea and may not be feasible - but the more ideas presented the better)

What about more books on Open Source this might be an earner.

[SOAMJENA]

This has been a question in my head since years, but I guess, this all happens from sponsors, etc.

[Oscar Blakely]

I think open source will take part as the online charity for all of us. The only thing that open source will be get profit is when certain company wanted to develop it for their future purposes.

[uaintgotthisid]

Non-profit is not the same as non-turnover. Offer services such as "professional support" with "Joomla! approved representitives". Allow a sponsored article? Recommend my website! Once I'm a quabillionaire I'll donate at least a tenner to the project!

[koter]

Open source projects can be funded:
- by charging for support
- by dual-licencing their software
- by taking donations
- by developing a product that many companies rely on (and make money with it) so they are willing to pay developers to develop it further

[dongmon]

To open source is a hard thing.

[johher]

Well I think that funds for open source can really be scarce for those who are just starting out, which would then decide the cycle your products are going to take. Though being open source does not mean you could not earn out of it anymore as there are a lot of things you could offer to be part of your compensation and of them is for support.

There are also those who offer paid upgrades so that they could get more things from what they are getting for free. But, it still depends on what licensing is used.

[dubois]

there's actually no logic and plausible reason to licence your work as GPL and giving it away to the dogs for free.

while it can work fine for the linux kernel or wordpress, it's not gonna work for complex application suites of enterprise level, see by yourself the linux world is still begging for a decent Outlook clone or a real plausible alternative to MS Office and it's stuck since 10 yrs with Evolution, Thunderbird and OpenOffice/LibreOffice with nothing good at the horizon.

more and more devs are finally realizing that open source doesn't magically bring money on the table nor it brings visibility or whatever else in between ... the number of promising but abandoned open source apps you can found on Sourceforge is a staggering reality check !

there's simply no incentive for a dev to build a professional product unless he gets some economic reward for its hard work, and even less for the crowd of volunteers who are mainly pennyless students or people with too much time in their hands.

my plan for joomla :

1 - provide a barebone free version which can only run a few basic addons and crippled in functionalities
2 - sell an enterprise version with all the bells & whistles
3 - launch an App Store for commercial templates and addons/extensions.

[alikon]

there's actually no logic and plausible reason to licence your work as GPL and giving it away to the dogs for free

simply disagree

the world is not only money-centric,

many professional software are developed under Open Source spirit i don't wont annoying with listing

consider that the best things are made not for money consider arts for example
consider Humanitarian aid association where people helps more unlucky people

knowledge have to be free and sharable

maybe sponsorship& donations could help

[dadset]

I THINK sure it have comercial purpose but first its free but when it will be papular then they give sponser and sell some plugin and extera services

[dubois]

yes, open source can pretty much work like NGOs but having dealt with NGOs
i have a terrible opinion about them and their business model.

at the end of the story users must accept the fact that if they need a solution
for their needs they have to pay for it and if enough of them pay the software house
will be able to improve further their business solutions thus benefiting everybody
instead of relying on these perpetual beta-version open source free apps with adware,
spyware, hidden links, donation links, etc who also pretend to be "better" just because
they're free to download.

p.s.
Art is made by single artists, but the best art has always been commercial and the artists have been well paid for it.

[alikon]

happy to know that people have different thoughts than mine


P.S.
a last thing usually artists deaths in poverty and NGO don't make business

[johans]

Open source is an art.... if you love your profession then money is not involve..samething with open source; gives you freedom of expression and its up to you how you handle. joomla is such amazing open source that gives idea out of the box...

[dubois]

sorry guys, look at the fate of Android with google not opening the code as it should and dozens of chinese brands forking the code and making money on YOUR shoulders without even giving any credit or saying thank you or releasing the source code of their hacks.

the world is in fact stealing open source code left and right and giving nothing back, they're laughing on oss coders actually.

is this progress ? is this benefiting mankind ?