Alessandro Nadalin gave a presentation on open source business models at the Better Software 2010 conference in Florence. He discussed four common ways that both open source and closed source companies generate revenue: 1) selling the software, 2) selling software support, 3) developing and boosting the software, and 4) providing training. He provided examples of companies like Canonical, Varien, Red Hat, and the Mozilla Foundation that have successfully implemented open source business models through combinations of these strategies. Nadalin also argued that open source licenses can effectively protect intellectual property rights and debunked the myth that open source work is unrewarding. He encouraged the audience to consider open source as a viable business model.
2. Who am I?
OS passionate & enthusiast
PHP developer
SEO consultant
Freelance used to work with OS products
Freelance used to give back to the OS market
✔
Member of the Joomla! Bug Squad
✔
GPL plugins for GPL softwares
Nerd
✔
Blog
✔
LinkedIN
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
3. Reasons why I'm here
Improve consciousness about OSS power
Clarify OS can be rewarding
Proove OSdriven business models can be
succesfully achieved
Florence is nice :)
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
4. Disclaimer
Do I hate companies working with closedsource
software?
No, love & peace dudes.
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
5. Table of contents
OS vs CS models
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Where do we get into?
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How do we get into?
OS case study
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Who's succefsully working with OSS?
OS rights
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We are not protected!
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We are not rewarded!
Hints
Cya
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
6. OS vs CS: what can we do?
1: We sell the software,
2: We sell software support,
3: We develop/boost the
software,
4: We train people for our
software.
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
7. VS1 CASE: we sell the software
CS companies are usually forced to sell their
software to survive
✔
CS companies usually give trial versions for free
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Timelimited
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functionallylimited
OS companies can easily choice between:
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Selling the software
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Distributing the software freely
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Provide both commercial and free software versions
( functionally equal )
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Provide both commercial and free software versions
( basic and enterprise edition ) OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
11. VS2: we sell software support
CS company can sell support:
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To the enduser
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To their resellers
OS company can sell support:
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To the enduser
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To their resellers
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To other companies
Other companies can be resellers and developers:
closed source software forces you
to consider other companies only as resellers.
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
13. VS3: boost the software
CS software:
✔
YOU
OSS:
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You and your customers
CS clients can provide feedbacks and tests. Passive stuff.
OS is the only place where the customer is active
(this reminds me the agile way, doesn't it?) and
interested in testing, reporting, providing patches,
features and so on.
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
15. VS4: we care a lot!
CS software training:
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Using the software
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Mastering the software
OSS trainings:
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Using the software
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Mastering the software
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Extending the software
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
16. Who's doing it right?
Let's analyze:
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Canonical
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Varien
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Red Hat
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Mozilla foundation
...leaving Alfresco, Atlassian, Sun and many others for your case studies...
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
17. Canonical
Provides both desktop and server
Ubuntu
Edubunutu
Kubuntu
editions while selling commercial contracts ( for
technical support ).
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
18. Varien
Provides free kickass ecommerce
platform Magento CE
Sells superkickass ecommerce platform
Magento Enterprise Edition
✔
Basically sells features for an already good software
Recently ( 15 March 2010 ) received a $22.5
million capital injection
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
19. Red Hat
Provides Fedora for free while selling RHEL
Althought I firstly admit Red Hat isn't the proper
company to show you, we have to admit that
since 1993 years RH is selling good software,
keeping together a solid community helping
other entities in fundraising ( CC ) instead of
being the fundraiser.
Red Hat is solid. That's the point.
OS companies can be solid companies.
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence
20. Mozilla foundation
Not properly a company as we intend it,
Mozilla's incomes are basically composed by:
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Fundraising
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General donations
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Partnerships
Partnerships?
Offers software integration: for example, Google
as the default search engine of FireFox.
Succesfull vertical integration.
24. At the end...
FLAME TIME!
P.S. : Feel free to contact me for discussing how
much does OSS kicksass :)
alessandro dot nadalin AT thegooglemailprovider dot com
OS business models @ Better Software 2010, Florence