So in the open source community the word "free" is used a lot, but it is a common misconception as to what "free" really means, does it mean free as in it doesn't cost anything or does it mean free as in freedom. Most open source projects it means both actually, but the word free means freedom. So this leaves a door open for making money, but how?
Well I'm going to discuss two potential ways, but understand that there are many more ways to make a business out of open source software. One of the most popular way to make a business out of open source software is to give the software away for free but sell support services on yearly basis. A perfect example of this Red Hat Inc., began it's business in 1995 selling support for the new released Red Hat Linux 2.0 and package manager called RPM. Now in 2010, the company is worth 7.8 billion dollars, not bad for a company that gives their software away for free and sells services like security patches and technical support.
Another way to make a business out of open source software is sell the software itself, but you have to provide the source code and give all the freedoms that are required under the whatever license you choose to use. This is a little more difficult because generally open source enthusiast don't like paying for software. iRedMail is great example though of an open source project that leverages both making money on software and giving the software away for free. This project is a complete email server based on other open source software packages. Then they decided to develop an administration panel and they sell this package. Now here is the smart part of this project, in order to use the email server you don't need to buy their administration panel in order to use the rest of open source project.
Now like I said these are only two ways to make money and a business out of open source software. It can be done and it is a viable business model, and it works well within the open source community model of freedom of software and the ability to modify software in order to best fit your needs. You would be surprised by how many members of the open source community who are willing to pay for software as long as they retain the freedom to do what they want with that software.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
Ubuntu 10.10 Beta Review
Ubuntu never disappoints when it comes to new features and the look of the Linux desktop. I just recently upgraded to Ubuntu 10.10 because I was starting to have little problems sprout up, mainly due to my tinkering and randomly installing packages trying to get something to work and then never cleaning them off. So needless to say, my computer was slowly getting cluttered and I decided to do a fresh install, or in other words I had a geek night.
My first impression was, this looks just like 10.04, not very impressed. Then I started to look under the hood, particularly the Ubuntu Software Center. I think this where Ubuntu is really going to have the opportunity to shine. Other distributions have tried to sell software on the desktop, one well known software store was called Click-N-Run by Linsphire, and even though it was well known it wasn't accepted as much as it could have been mainly because Linsphire wasn't very popular. Ubuntu doesn't have this problem, since Ubuntu is probably the most well known Linux desktop on the block I think the Ubuntu Software Center is going to take off and do very well.
All in all it is pretty solid operating system, the only drawback that I have noticed is programs that run on a consistent basis crash often. I am going to attribute this to the fact that it is still in beta release and hopefully it will work itself out when full release comes out. Like I said earlier Ubuntu never fails to impress me and I think the developers at Canonical are doing an awesome job at developing a stable desktop. So go get your copy of Ubuntu 10.10 and try it out I think you will be very impressed at the features that this Linux distribution has to offer.
I'm including a screenshot of my desktop to show how beautiful the Ubuntu desktop looks:
My first impression was, this looks just like 10.04, not very impressed. Then I started to look under the hood, particularly the Ubuntu Software Center. I think this where Ubuntu is really going to have the opportunity to shine. Other distributions have tried to sell software on the desktop, one well known software store was called Click-N-Run by Linsphire, and even though it was well known it wasn't accepted as much as it could have been mainly because Linsphire wasn't very popular. Ubuntu doesn't have this problem, since Ubuntu is probably the most well known Linux desktop on the block I think the Ubuntu Software Center is going to take off and do very well.
All in all it is pretty solid operating system, the only drawback that I have noticed is programs that run on a consistent basis crash often. I am going to attribute this to the fact that it is still in beta release and hopefully it will work itself out when full release comes out. Like I said earlier Ubuntu never fails to impress me and I think the developers at Canonical are doing an awesome job at developing a stable desktop. So go get your copy of Ubuntu 10.10 and try it out I think you will be very impressed at the features that this Linux distribution has to offer.
I'm including a screenshot of my desktop to show how beautiful the Ubuntu desktop looks:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
