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Open source business model

How do WIKI providers, and other open source vendors make their money?


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Dubbs
(deleted account)

Depending on what you are talking about there are different answers to that question. WikiPedia is funded by the charitable non-profit WikiMedia Foundation. Other companies, such as SugarCRM, release a subset of their full product as open source with additional features present in their commercial editions. MySQL dual licenses their products charging for technical support and special licenses for companies needing to integrate the MySQL software into their proprietary software systems.

Many open source products don't make any money at all but are merely maintained by volunteers or the generous support of corporate sponsors. There are so many different ways that open source is used and developed in the business world that there is no single answer to this question. 

Posted 2007-12-25T01:58:45Z
Dubbs was invited by Yedda to answer this question.

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Open source vendors often sell service: you pay a completed project, on a turn-key basis, or engineer's hours, or some stand-by duty enabling you to use the software without any worry

 

On-line free publishers often earn thanks to advertising or some "premium" services. 

Posted 2007-12-26T23:15:44Z
 
258 helpful answers

By being charities that have funds donated by the community of users to keep the development running and/or by being consultants for custom and in-depth support of said software for users. 

Posted 2007-12-27T16:27:27Z

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