the business of free software

THE BUSINESS OF FREE SOFTWARE

Aditya Banerjee

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Agenda

What is free? Free Software Licenses Role of Internet Players Commercialization approaches Statistics Misc

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Free as in freedom

Freedoms to: run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0) study how the program works, and adapt it to

your needs (freedom 1) redistribute copies so you can help your

neighbour (freedom 2) improve the program, and release your

improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3)

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Licenses

8/3/2009Source: http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/floss-license-

slide.html

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Too much freedom?

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Internet changes the dynamicsThe Cathedral & the Bazaar

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Before

Needs

Design

DevelopTest

Maintain

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After

Needs

Design

DevelopTest

Maintain

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Some major players

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Making money from freeReally?

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The Linux way

Value addition Contributing upstream Technical support Training

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The eclipse way

Develop & open source platform

Use non-restrictive license

Core commercial products based on platform License fee Training Support

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Some numbers

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Web Servers market share

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Source: http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.htm

l

Source: http://www.thecounter.com/stats/

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Web browsers: Usage share

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Misc

Revolution OS - http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=7707585592627775409

Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)? Look at the Numbers! - http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html

The Cathedral and the Bazaar - http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/index.html

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