Open source
From Sysadmin
Many sysadmins declare that they are technology neutral. By this they mean that they will assess all technologies and choose the best one for their employer. This is most often uses in reference to choosing an open source or proprietary solution. Unfortunately many such decisions are made on a comparison of the tools without examining the wider implications of the source model chosen.
It is essential that the tool that is chosen fulfills the requirements, and this involves an evaluation of the licencing. See Implicit Business Requirements.
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Definition
Open source software is normally considered to be such because it has been endorsed by the Open Source Initiative. The term open source is neither copyrighted nor trademarked as OSI was unable to achieve either of these. The authority of the OSI is therefore customary but universal.
Generating Revenue
Many people outside the open source community are surprised that revenue is generated from open source software. There are many ways in which this is done, and undoubtedly many more methods will be discovered in the future. Common methods for generating revenue with open source software include the following.
Service Delivery Model
In this model the corporation provides the open source software to the customer but charges for a variety of services such as installation, customisation, support or adding additional functionality to the application. Many core team developers consult using this model.
Dual Licensing Model
In this model the application is available simultaneously under an open source license and a proprietary license. This model is notable in that all copyright holders must agree to the dual licencing. One way to achieve this is to require reassignment of copyright to a single legal entity before the code will be committed to the project's code tree. The MySQL project is a notable example of this approach.
Value Added Model
In this modal the open source software is packaged along with (but not linked to) proprietary software that is sold by the company. Quite a number of companies will provide an open source project to customers and package it with GUI management tools under a proprietary license.
Cost Sharing model
In this model a corporation needs to develop certain software but does not expect to directly gain revenue by doing so. An example of this is a server manufacturer who needs to develop an operating system to allow customers to actually use their server hardware. In the past companies would develop an operating system in house. This was a cost centre. More recently server hardware companies will port an open source operating system and contribute to its development - adding the features that they consider to be useful.
