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How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

mikeperham.com

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Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#61

Post by wslh »

patio11 wrote: post #6

I think there are likely a variety of contractual options other than "24/7 phone support" which businesses would be happy to pay for, on an ongoing basis. For example, you could charge $500 plus $100 per year for "maintenance", and not be any more specific than "the software will be maintained in an ongoing fashion", and now you won't be starting from $0 next January 1st. As someone who has started from $0 every Janu…

My company has two good types of yearly contracts for "advanced support" oriented to large companies. In both we can charge a good price because they support complex technologies.

One is our own product that is very costly to maintain (reverse engineering third party applications) and some customers agree that they need to have this additional service.

Another one is for complex application virtualization. For example, we give the technology for virtualizing IE6 on Windows 7 and 8 but some Microsoft updates break the solution and the company needs to have an "insurance" against that.

Simple support gives a lot of headache.

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#62

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

justin_vanw wrote: post #36

The title of this article is the opposite of what the article says. He made almost no money with open source. He made tons of money by withholding features from the open source library and instead only offering them under a commercial license as an add-on. Since this is itself a violation of the LGPL, anyone using the Pro version isn't even using open source at all, as both the original and Pro enhancements are at th…

What essential features is he withholding? The non-pro version is absolutely usable.

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#63

Post by informatimago »

tedunangst wrote: post #49
justin_vanw wrote: post #36

The title of this article is the opposite of what the article says. He made almost no money with open source. He made tons of money by withholding features from the open source library and instead only offering them under a commercial license as an add-on. Since this is itself a violation of the LGPL, anyone using the Pro version isn't even using open source at all, as both the original and Pro enhancements are at th…

Violation of the LGPL? By the author?

The GPL licenses do not prevent the owner of the copyright to release other copies under another license.

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#65

Post by informatimago »

rustybones wrote: post #44

Can someone help me understand whether he's the only one allowed to build a paid service over the open source code, or could anyone technically take away all his open source code and build the same service he provides in the pro. Because if he doesn't have that control, then this is really not making money with open source but rather relying on existing open source to make money

As a non owner of the copyright, but beneficiary of a GPL license, you would be allowed to make a derived work (your own "pro" version), and to distribute it (to sell it), but it would have to be under the GPL.

In this case, since it is a library under the LGPL, you could make a client product using this library, instead of a derived work, and you could distribute this product under your own terms, but if you provide the library along, you must of course keep this library under the LGPL (and provide the sources of the library).

So with the LGPL, you are free to make competiting proprietary products.

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#66

Post by rushabh »

icebraining wrote: post #19
rushabh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. This is pretty inspiring. We at https://erpnext.com have been looking to help govt agencies implement our Open Source ERP, but lack a forum where we can connect with such needs. Can you suggest us a way forward. I think our product can serve a great need for government organizations.

You don't seem to do any custom development / extensions, which according to our experience¹ implementing OpenERP solutions, it's pretty much mandatory for any large company or governmental agency. ¹ http://www.thinkopensolutions.com/SoluçõesOpenERP/CasosdeSuc... (Portuguese)

We initially burnt hands doing custom development so stay away these days. 90% of our revenue comes from cloud hosting, which is opposite of OpenERP (which gets 90% of revenue via Partners). If we do custom development, product will suffer, so we are staying out. But we are happy to consider it if it really makes sense.

Will be happy to hear your views though (will send you a separate mail on this).

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#67

Post by jrallison »

informatimago wrote: post #63
tedunangst wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Violation of the LGPL? By the author?

The GPL licenses do not prevent the owner of the copyright to release other copies under another license.

Technically, Sidekiq Pro isn't a copy. It's a set of plugins designed to integrate with the open source project.

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#68

Post by GFischer »

runako wrote: post #51
GFischer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I upvoted you because it's an interesting dissenting opinion, and I've always wondered about whether the upside of being open beats the downside of additional competition. We also don't know whether he paid taxes on the income (I also guess not), and, most importantly, whether his blog post will bring him additional revenue. Do you have many examples where blogging about success brought about competition? Are there b…

>> We also don't know whether he paid taxes on the income (I also guess not) Mike is an upstanding citizen and member of the open source community. There's absolutely no reason to make unfounded claims like this against his integrity.

I'm sorry, you're right. I should not have assumed otherwise.

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#69

Post by Mikeb85 »

GFischer wrote: post #39
eru wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And since the bureaucratic overhead is so high, you better ask for enough money to make it worthwhile.

Remember the often quoted advice from Joel Spolsky: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie... Enterprise sales cycle is EXPENSIVE, so, while the actual cost of your service may be much less, you have to pay for the ten airplane flights and meetings and hotel rooms before you close your sale (and add a few one afterwards for good measure). also http://cdixon.org/2010/02/06/selling-to-enterprises/…

> big freaking enterprises don't use Ruby that much.

Of course not. Ruby is slow, dynamic, and uses a ton of magic. Ruby is inherently more suited to smaller developers, who can use it to generate code, run scripts, embed it in things, and make use of the magic to be productive (things like generating C++, Fortran, or HTML).

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#70

Post by karamazov »

mperham wrote: post #31

Author here, thanks for the kind words. Always nice to wake up to a DDoS of my site at 2AM. :-) Recurring revenue is a pricing change I'm seriously considering, I just don't have a payment system in place that can manage my customer list and handle the annual CC charge.

Try Stripe. They're easy to integrate and handle that with no problem.
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