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?

Related Posts:

• Becoming a Freelance Web Developer/Designer
• What's the best CMS?
• Reorder Gallery now in WordPress Core
• The Heart of Open Source
• Can open source eCommerce contend?

The first application I looked into was osCommerce. The best way I can describe it is as an old dragon. It may be free and open source, but it’s big, bulky, and outdated. I was looking for something much easier to use, and much more current. Something that would be easy to manage once it was set up, as opposed to taking two hours to add color options to a product.

Not to be discouraged, I moved on another possibility, zenCart. ZenCart is a huge step in the right direction, but it still seemed to lack the intuitive interface that you might expect from web based software. I may be too hard on them, but a quality user interface makes the difference between happy customers, and customers that never return. All in all, there is a lot of really great technology which zenCart doesn’t use, and while it’s free and open source, that doesn’t make up for it’s lack of usability.

I continued to look around at free alternatives, but didn’t find anything noteworthy. Now I was discouraged. I decided to check into some commercial products, most notably cubeCart. It costs $130 – $180 and it’s not 100% open source, but cubeCart makes up for all that with the interface. It has an intuitive admin section, better support, and plenty of available add-on modules (for shipping, payment, even affiliate programs). In the end, we went with cubeCart, deciding that the benefits were worth the cost. I was almost ready to admit that the available FOSS options couldn’t touch commercial products in this market. Just then, a glimmer of hope! Magento.

Magento is a new up and coming PHP shopping cart, built using the Zend Framework. It is young and currently still in beta, but it shows great promise. According to their roadmap, the production version is due out first quarter 2008. It’s current drawbacks are it’s lack of support for certain payment and shipping gateways, and it’s lack of support for popular affiliate programs. However, much of this is in the roadmap, and should make it into the production version. In my experience, what they currently have out is stable, and extremely user friendly. I can finally breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that there will soon be a FOSS option that will be able to compete with their commercial counterparts.

In the end, if you need something right now, cubeCart is for you. While it will require some up front investment, you will save it back just on the Tylenol you won’t be buying for the headaches you will have with osCommerce or zenCart. However, if you don’t need something for a few months, or you are trying to keep an eye to the future, check out magento. You’ll be glad you did.

Related Posts:

• More on Magento
• How to Profit with the Open Source Community
• What's the best CMS?
• Reorder Gallery now in WordPress Core
• Why Contribute to the Open Source Community