Business Success with Open Source

Open Source Is Not a Business Model

If you hang around software business circles, it won’t be long before you hear someone talking about a company having an “open source business model.” That phrase is as nonsensical as a company claiming that their CEO is a manatee named Hugh.

Free and open source software (FOSS) is many things. It’s a movement for free and shared access to resources; it’s a community of practitioners; it’s a collaborative development method; it’s a critical component of business models. Therein lies the confusion: it’s a component, not the model itself.

As you just learned, business models require several different elements for practical representation of a business. That model defines how a business meets its goals. For ...