The question that I’m asked most often when I talk to people about open source software is “Who pays for all this?” as well as variants like “Then how do they make money?” or “Won’t people eventually stop working for free?” We live in a capitalistic society, and people don’t understand why someone would work for free when they could be making money. In this article, I’m not going to cling to ideals on why doing something for the community shows more worth than your bank account balance, instead I’m going to explain how open source developers (myself included) do in fact make money by developing quality software for free. Hopefully in the process you will find a way to give back to the community and get your piece of the pie.

How can I make money from Open Source Software?

There’s more than one approach to making money from free software. Companies like Trolltech and MySQL AB use a dual-license approach, where they retain ownership of their code and offer it with an open source GPL license and a more traditional license. Why would someone pay for a product they can get for free? The top reason is usually support. Companies, especially the big ones, want to use software that has a company standing behind it. A company they can go to with questions and even hold responsible if something breaks. The second reason, one that is more specific to these companies that use the dual-license approach, is actually the license itself. If a company wants to include the MySQL database into a traditional closed-source project, one they hope to sell, they can’t legally do that with the GPL’d version. Instead they must purchase the alternative license. These “second generation” open source companies are bridging the gap between open and closed source. It’s a fine line to walk, and I’m not saying that either company i mentioned is a shining example of what this kind of company could be, but there is no ignoring the fact that these companies profit from open source software which also benefits the community.

Another way to make some profit from open source can clearly be seen in companies like Zend Technologies. The company was founded by Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, who are very well known for their contributions to the PHP programming language. Zend Technologies develops products relating to the development, deployment and management of business critical PHP based web applications. They have proprietary tools that they sell, such as Zend Platform, Zend Guard, and the amazing Zend Studio. So how do they contribute to open source, and how does it benefit them? Well, their company is built around PHP, an open source language. It’s in their best interest to make sure PHP is the best it can be, and as such they contribute huge amounts of code to the PHP project, in turn helping the PHP community, even those that don’t use their products. They also release things like the Zend Framework, a high quality open source PHP framework, which can drastically reduce project development time, increase portability of code, and ease the process of creating an MVC application in PHP. Again, this helps to increase the number of programmers that use PHP, which increases their customer base. No licensing strings attached, just a mutually beneficial relationship.

Then there are companies like Automattic. Automattic is built around WordPress, an open source project that I happen to be quite interested in, since a decent portion of Xavisys’s work is done on WordPress. They run WordPress.com, but have diversified their income, making money from upgrades, VIP hosting, ads, Akismet licensing, and enterprise services. WordPress.com uses the WordPress software, so when Automattic’s developers commit code to WordPress, it helps their company, but also benefits the rest of us that use WordPress. So why don’t they stop doing this, and keep the code to themselves? Well, because while they help me, I also help them. When I see a problem with WordPress, I submit a patch to fix it. When I see a feature that I would like, I submit the code to add it. In the end, they make my software better, and I make their software better. It’s mutually beneficial. I think a lot of other industries, and even other sections of this industry, should learn to embrace of this kind of symbiotic relationship.

So you see that large companies can turn open source into monetary gain, but what about you? What about the smaller developer? I’d like to respectfully submit my last case study, Xavisys. A company that I happen to know quite well. I don’t help the community for monetary gain, I do it because I think that community is extremely important to the well being of the human race. I think that people who are involved in their community make the world a better place to be, and I want to be one of those people. However, even though it’s not the reason I contribute to the community, I do reap the benefits. One of the difficulties of being a development company is that there is so much competition, it can be hard to be noticed. You might be twice as good as the next guy, but if no one knows about your company and the services it offers, you’re out of luck. Not too long ago, I started releasing all my WordPress plugins into the WordPress.org repository. I gave a bunch of code away for free. The most popular one (WP Google Analytics) has only been up for 19 days, and has been downloaded 2,635 times. It feels good that so many people are benefiting from something I wrote, but how am I benefiting? Well, since I started releasing my plugins, traffic to my site has tripled. I don’t run any ads, so I’m not making anything off the traffic itself, but I’m getting more paid jobs from people who are already confident in my abilities because they use some of my plugins. These people are easier to sell my services to, because they are already convinced that I’m up to the task.

What does this mean? Look for something mutually beneficial. A way that you can help others and in turn they help you. No exploitation, a symbiotic give and take. Now that you know it’s possible, wouldn’t you rather make money that way?

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Building a company is hard work, but I’ve decided to draw a line in the sand. Xavisys is going to be a great company because I stand behind it, and I’m an upstanding, honest person that you can get to know.

The term “Marketing strategy” sounds like a group of people in a back room, devising ways to fool you, the consumer, into buying whatever they offer. It gives the impression that trickery or underhanded tactics are being used. I want to blow that out of the water. There are plenty of great businesses out there that have great people standing behind them. Rackspace gives me an account representative that actually answers the phone when I call, and works to get any issue (even the minor ones) resolved as quickly as possible. Not exactly status quo with hosting companies, but it should be. My good friend James Pearson has a socially proactive business called Acholi Beads, and I would be able to guarantee it was great even if I knew nothing about it except that he stands behind it. That’s the kind of business I like to deal with, and that’s the kind of business Xavisys is, and will continue to be.

There are other places out there where you can take your web development work. There are other places that have a thorough knowledge of WordPress customization and plugin development. There are even other people out there with years of real world experience. While I have all that, and am confident that Xavisys can stand on technical merit alone, that’s not why you should use Xavisys. You should use it because I’m active in my community (online and off), and have people who will speak to my character. You should use it because it’s a family owned and operated company, and my wife Christen and I personally guarantee you will never be charged more hours than were really worked, and that corners won’t be cut that will cost you in the long run. You should use it because you know that it’s named after my son Xavier, and I want it to be an example of how he should live, not how much he should make.

That’s my commitment, not at the expense of quality work, but in addition to it. It’s a high standard, and if you ever think I’m not living up to it, let me know.

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I asked James if he might help me with work out a marketing strategy for Xavisys, and the first thing he asked for was a white board (preferably a few). I may not be creative, but I know the advantages of having space to scribble as you work out problems. Along the way however, I’ve gotten rid of the white board, in favor of my glass desk. I keep a collection of dry erase markers and Vis-A-Vis markers at my desk, and whenever I need to write something down, I grab one and write it right on my desk. Dry erase markers are for very short-term things, since moving things around on the desk can often erase what you’ve written. The Vis-A-Vis markers on the other hand stay just fine, until they get wet, which is perfect, because they can be cleaned off with a damp paper towel. Since it’s not very cool to cram a bunch of people around my desk in my office, I got out the markers, and we started marking up some windows in my house.

We started by talking about what Xavisys does, the mundane list of services rendered. Soon we were talking about what made Xavisys stand apart from other companies. Then, as we wrapped up the boring summation, things really stared to happen. James and Steve started spouting ideas at break neck speed. Nothing was thrown out or ignored, only built upon. I enjoy improv comedy and used to be part of a group that performed and I’ve even taught improv techniques. We had an exercise called “yes and” which taught players how to take ideas and run with them, rather than ignore them. Basically, you could not say no, or turn down any idea offered, instead you answered “yes and ____,” adding your own twist to the scene in progress. This was that game.

This method produces plenty of bad ideas. Among the tag lines that were later thrown out were phrases like “Enslave the Internet”, “Funk Shun” and “Make the internet your pool boy!” What amazed me, was that after a relatively short time, small nuggets of gold began to emerge from the dross, phrases like “Interface with the world” and “Take control of the internet.” All leading to the one diamond in the rough, “Control Your Internet.”

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map.enableScrollWheelZoom();

However, as great of a product as it is, it seems to be lacking some things. For example, if I want an info window that gives the options to get directions to or from that location, I have to do all that myself. I have to generate the links, and make them replace the content of the info window with a form that I have to make, and I have to make that form run some JavaScript when executed to get the directions. Why? This has GOT to be a common task. Why not build it into the API? However, in the end, that pales in comparison to the real problem. There is no way to validate a Google Maps API key! Instead, you have to load JavaScript using that key, and it uses an alert to announce that the key was bad! No one wants a JavaScript alert to pop up on their page! Since I’m making a WordPress plugin out of this (teaser!), I needed to make sure that the users of my plugin wouldn’t have this issue. I ended up having to override the alert function on the options page for my plugin like this:

var KillAlerts = true;
var realAlert = alert;
var alert = new Function('a', 'if(!KillAlerts){realAlert(a)}');

Then I added a function that runs on page load, re-enables the alerts, and checks if the key was valid:

function load()
{
    // Re-anable alerts
    KillAlerts = false;

    if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {
        // Key is valid
    } else {
        if (G_INCOMPAT) {
            // Key is NOT valid.
        } else {
            // Can't tell if the Google API Key is valid, due to the browser not being compatible with the Google Maps API.
        }
    }
}

There is no reason that it should be that complicated. They should have a web service where I can send a request to verify a key, or their script should set a global variable rather than send an ugly alert! In the end, it’s a great product, but I would have expected that these kind of rough edges would have been taken care of by now. Google, you make me sad.

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“When we look back on the desktop software era, I think we’ll marvel at the inconveniences people put up with, just as we marvel now at what early car owners put up with. For the first twenty or thirty years, you had to be a car expert to own a car. But cars were such a big win that lots of people who weren’t car experts wanted to have them as well.Computers are in this phase now. When you own a desktop computer, you end up learning a lot more than you wanted to know about what’s happening inside it….Ordinary users shouldn’t even know the words “operating system,” much less “device driver” or “patch.”
There is now another way to deliver software that will save users from becoming system administrators. Web-based applications are programs that run on Web servers and use Web pages as the user interface. For the average user this new kind of software will be easier, cheaper, more mobile, more reliable, and often more powerful than desktop software.”

Paul Graham, 2001

1. Cross-platform compatibility: Web-based applications can be easily designed to work on any system. It’s why with our products you can use the computer of your choice. Use Unix, Linux, Mac, or Windows equipment! You can even use any combination of systems, allowing you to choose the computer that best for you, rather than the computer that will run your application.
2. Updates: With web-based applications, updates are applied to one central location, allowing ALL users to benefit immediately from the update, without requiring the user to take any action, and without wasting the user’s precious time with downloading/installing updates.
3. Immedite availability: Web-based applications do not need to be installed and configured like standard programs. Instead you simply access the online application via your web browser, and you are immediately ready to use it.
4. Lower minimum system requirements: Web-based applications run on a web server rather than on the user’s system. This allows the vast majority of the application’s memory/CPU requirements to be handled by the server, leaving the user’s have far more reasonable demands on end-user RAM memory than locally installed programs. By residing and running off a provider servers, memory requirements very low. This can save even small companies thousands of dollars in computer equipment!
5. Fewer Bugs: Web-based applications can be run in a controled environment (web server), leaving them less prone to crashing, especially due to software or hardware conflicts. Also, everyone uses the same version, so there are no backwards compatability issues.
6. Price: Web-based applications do not require the distribution or marketing infrastructure required by traditional hard copy software. This allows web-based applications to cost a fraction of their hard copy counterparts.
7. Real time data availability: Web-based applications allow any information that has been input into them to be immediately seen by other users. No need to call them with the info, or send a backup that they need to restore. It’s just there, waiting for them!
8. Data availability across locations: Web-based applications allow you to use that same real time data availability from anywhere! If you input data at your California location, your regional manager can see it at his house, and your locations in Florida, Maine, even China can see it immediately! Distance is no longer an issue.
9. Data is safer: Hardware will always fail, however a properly configured server can minimalize or even eliminate the effect of suck problems. Most servers use redundant storage as well as regularly scheduled backups, so a single hardware failure, or even user error, does not result in data loss. Imagine that Sally, a long time employee clicks the wrong thing, and deletes an entire group of customers, and all data associated with them! Now imagine that this doesn’t worry you in the least! You simply roll back all data to 15 minutes ago! And to top it off, you have this same security against hardware failure or even the lates computer virus!

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