the business of free software
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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
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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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