open source projects

Recently i have seen a few open source related threads pop up and after some thinking, what are the advantages of offering your hard labour coding up large projects as open source. I suppose the biggest example is the phpbb forums. I know they have google ads on the main site which im sure get clicked now and again, but from a business point of view surely its just not worth the time and effort? At the end of the day businesses are there to make money, but can it really be done with open source software?

This goes back to the free vs. free argument. Open source software can still be sold for profit. It's not free in the "no cost" sense, it's free in the "do with it what you want" sense.

Hi ,
I am intrested in being part of a open source project.

I am willing to provide marketing and documentation support.


Plz mail or post a reply if you are intrested .

www.opuc.co.uk

Basically, they're skill builders, with the off-chance that you can make something worthwhile, lik FireFox.

There's also the point of selling support, customization, documentation, etc.

Open source software, in itself, can be very profitable. Take a look at Red Hat, for example: They are a rather large company, built on the sale of support for an open source product, Linux.

In the past, 2 of the websites I've developed have been done so under the GPL license. Since then, I have decided to not release my products under this license. Why? Marketing.

You have to weigh out the options, prior to licensing something under the (L)GPL, or any other similar license.

First, you need to decide if you want to be able to generate income off the sale of the product itself. If so, open source probably isn't the way to go.

Second, you need to decide if others will benefit from the release of your product. This ties in with the first step as well. If you can't really see any argument why someone would want your product, then open source isn't the best choice.

Third, do you want others to be able to get their grubby, grimey hands all over your beautiful, flawless, pristine code? Again, if the answer is "no", don't go open source.


In my experience, 99% of the products that I develop for hire are speciaized and specific to the business they are developed for. With that in mind, releasing the products as open source really would benefit nobody. However, there have been portions of each product that I have reused. These portions are kept in a pseudo-modular form, so reuse is relatively simple. Those "modules" are very beneficial, so I have considered releasing them to the public.

The question of "Will I make money?" from this decision can be answered 2 ways:

The first way is from a purely capitalist view, and is "No."
The second way is from the open source philiosophy view, and is "Maybe, but that's not really the reason to make something open source." Advertising, packaging, and support are examples of the "maybe" clause of this answer.

The question you have asked really can't be answered easily. The best bet for you would be to get your feet wet. Put together a forum, blog, or simple CMS and release it under the GPL. Promote it, and see what kind of outcome you get from it.