constantinos bairaktaris- making money with open source

Making money with Open Source: Our story

Konstantinos Bairaktaris

Lead engineer of Transifex

kbairak@indifex.com

Who

A few things about Transifex

● Server sorftware● Cloud service● Workflow management● Remote collaboration● Crowdsourcing / community● Hosting solution

and, of course,● Localization

bitbucket

The big How?

There are a number of ways someone can make money from Open Source

software

The big How?

The actual sales part:● Services around the product

(support, consulting)● Dual licensing / Enterprise versions● Software-as-a-Service / hosting

While at the same time:● Leveraging all the advantages of

developing an Open Source product

Our business model

Our products:

Our business model

Our products:● Transifex.net

Our business model

Our products:● Transifex.net● Transifex, community edition

Our business model

Our products:● Transifex.net● Transifex, community edition● Transifex, enterprise edition

Our business model

How it works:● Transifex community edition is Open

Source software● It's developed in such a way that it

can be used both as server software and as development library

Our business model

How it works (cont):● Transifex.net and Transifex enterprise

edition are built using Transifex community edition as a library

● Our software is modular so we can 'compile' tailored enterprise editions “on the fly”

● Transifex.net can be said to be our own enterprise edition

Our business model

Target audience, non-paying:● Users/organizations who host their

projects on Transifex.net using the 'free' plan

● Users/organizations who use and/or modify Transifex community edition on their own infrastructure

Our business model

Target audience, paying:● Subscriptions to our paid plans (SaaS

sales)● Enterprise sales/collaborations:

support, consulting, hosting, funding for new features on Transifex.net, development of their own, licensed Transifex enterprise edition

What Open Source means for Transifex

and a few notes around marketing

What Open Source means for Transifex

Product is open source:● Originally developed as a GsoC

project● Transifex is developed on Open

Source Frameworks (whose developers tend to use Transifex)

● Lots of presentations at Open Source conferences

● It “goes down well” with the Open Source community

What Open Source means for Transifex

Product is open source (cont):● Originally offered as standalone

software● Potential clients can test and review

the product before collaboration● Quality patches, bug reports and

beta testing from the community● No vendor lock-in, customers can

switch to their own version of Transifex at any time

What Open Source means for Transifex

Our stance towards the Open Source community:

● Our free plan includes unlimited quotas for Open Source projects

● We are more than willing to provide advanced features to Open Source projects

● We get a lot of love back from the community

● Product simply fits users' needs (especially Open Source projects)

How can a local team provide support to a global audience● SaaS sales have low cost● Marketing plan revolves around Open

Source● State-of-the-art support services● Low-latency support (which can lead to

sales)● Development team is distributed

around the world

Thank you for listening

Questions?