Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Can we make profit from FOSS (as a developer)?

Today I had a little conversation with one of my friends, Kusal about FOSS (Free Open Source Software). So I thought to start a conversation on making profit from FOSS...

  • Commercial Companies
    • They make money by selling services.
    • Those services include customer support, product customization, consultancy services, training and selling licences.
    • The examples of companies which have gain lot of revenue are,
  • As a developer
    • If you are a developer you can still make money there are lot of opportunities.
    • You can get some revenue by placing advertisements in your software home page.
    • You can promote your other commercial websites using your product or website.
    • Your work may help you to get scholarship for higher education.
    • Your work will be an advantage on any job interview.
I think "Free Open Source Software" is the best thing that has happened to Software Industry, it is a community service, but by contributing to FOSS you can also make money and their are more advantages too.

This article is "AFAIK" kind of article. In other words based on my knowledge... so feel free to criticise me or add something to this.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the idea of open source, but
If the software is free there will be no value for your time, money and brains.
The whole world exsist on a value, same apply for IT also. if you make profits from your product you can improve it.
As a community service Free software is good.

Kusal Arthanayake
my-sliit.blogspot.com