The Increasing Usages of Open Source Software
October 25, 2013
According to “Greed is Good: 9 Open Source Secrets to Making Money, the creation of open source software is not always seen as solely a charitable act. While it is true that many programmers have been performing many acts of pure charity, in the form of contributing long and hard hours of work to create open source software, many companies have utilized open source software as another money-making asset.
One of the uses for open source software is to strengthen a company’s marketing arsenal. Some companies choose to release products as an open source package to attract users and to spread the word about their offerings.
MySQL reportedly says it is not important to focus on how many people get a free product. Instead, energy should be focused on the “upsell”:
“The trick is to make sure that the moneymaking features are compelling enough to support the rest of the product. They should be a small part of the product but crucial for the folks who will pay. Sometimes the extra may be a feature that increases stability for enterprise clients that want their software to run smoothly 24/7. Others offer privacy and force users of the open source version to broadcast their work to the world. These small features are supporting hundreds if not thousands of companies today.”
Many may see this article as disillusioning to the tenets of open source philosophy that were developed without such corruptible factors, like money, in mind. While the article may beg readers to question if the philosophy of open source has been tarnished, we hope that is not the case and that a less greedy crowd of open source pioneers remain.
Megan Feil, October 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
