Open Source Business Models

MySQL CEO Marten Mickos spoke Wednesday at IDG's Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco. He presentation focused on Open Source Business Models. As part of that he offered a list of the different ways he's seen open source manifest itself in the market.

He lists (as per InfoWorld):
* Donations are needed, such as with the Apache and Eclipse foundations.
* Ads and placements are sold, like with Mozilla.
* Fees are charged if the free software is embedded in closed-source software. MySQL is an example of this.
* Services are fee-based, such as with Ubuntu.
* Ongoing maintenance, monitoring and binaries are sold, such as with MySQL again, or JBoss or Red Hat.
* Some enterprise features are sold, like with SugarCRM.
* A closed-source product is built around an open source technology, such as with EnterpriseDB.
* Hardware is sold to supplement the free software. Sun Microsystems is in this category, Mickos said. Although the open source software is free, everything else is sold, including closed source software. Mickos cited IBM as applying this methodology for monetizing open source.
* Open source software is free, but the real business is something else. Ruby on Rails was listed as an example. (David Heinemeier Hansson offers Rails for free but works for 37signals.)
* Offering free software is later regretted. Borland Softrware's doings with Interbase were cited.
* A purveyor of software decides it does not want its software anymore.
* Driving of Web traffic is leveraged.

You can read the full article here.