When many people first hear about businesses that make their living selling open source software, their first question is usually something like “How can you sell something that’s available for free?” That complicated answer is addressed in this chapter.
Even restricting the discussion to “free as in beer” doesn’t simplify it much. The business world is full of examples of free and paid services or products supporting and subsidizing each other in various ways. It’s a hard formula to get right, and business models based on such approaches can rapidly shift with technology and consumer ...
