Week 8 Response to Content

How does open source software create revenue?

Open source software is the 'free redistribution, source code, derived works, integrity of the author's source code, no discrimination against persons or groups, no discrimination against fields of endeavour, distribution of license, licenses must not be specific to a product, license must not restrict other software and license must be technology-neutral' (McNamara, 2010). So how do the companies that produce these free software alternatives create revenue to function?

The down side to open source software is that if a problem occurs with the software and the user does not have the technological knowledge to fix it, there is no support package to assist with the problem. One way that companies make money from open source software is by selling support packages with the free software so a university student for example, does not lose their whole university assignment (Heffner, 2005).

Another way that these companies create revenue is by attaching a dual licence to their product. For example, the open source database company MySQL offers its open source software package under a general public licence for open source developers. When creating your own software package the distributer then has to release the software package under the same general public licence. If the creator of the new software package wants to sell their software, they need to purchase a traditional paid licence from MySQL, therefore creating revenue for MySQL (Heffner, 2005).

There are many other ways that companies can create revenue from open source software. Although this does not make the software ‘free’ in respect to price anymore, it is cheaper than purchasing proprietary software and is still free to use.  

References

Heffner. B, ‘How do you make money from open source software’, 2005, accessed 29^th September 2011, http://clarklane.blogspot.com/2005/01/how-do-you-make-money-from-open-source.html

McNamara. K, ‘Open Source Software’, 2010, PreQuest  Central Database, Accessed 29^th September 2011 http://search.proquest.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/docview/756008530