Nicholas Petreley of LinuxWorld has a timely article on making money in the open source world. You may have read my recent article on free and open source basics. I intended to write a companion article on free and open source economics, because the follow-up question by my Ph.D brother was on the very same subject. However, here is Petreley’s somewhat pessimistic view. ‘…I don’t think we should depend on selling software. We should shift the focus, because clearly the real money to be made in the future is in hardware and
services…’
‘…companies like VA Linux continue to grow at a nice clip because their income is not dependent upon the success of the distributors. If anything, IBM showed its
confidence in Linux as it intensified its Linux support even while Linux stocks faltered…’
…I have a feeling that nobody has quite figured out how to make money on software in the open source economy. That isn’t surprising to me. Few people have
quite figured out how to make tubs of money on the Internet. People used to think a lot of money would be made on Web advertising, but that isn’t panning out
for most sites. I don’t see how it could. So a new economic model for the Internet must emerge, and I believe it will.’