Money from Free Software?

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>>60684381
>he fell for the free software meme

>>60684381
make users pay extra for the source code.

>download free software
>wrap a SAAS around free software
>free to make changes and don't need to release source code unless it is AGPL

Yes, RedHat make ~$2.5b revenue a year for example

>>60684984
its easy to make money when you trick people into doing your work for you LOL

>>60684381
yes, if you're not writing APPZ and you're actually using it for its intended purpose of being an extensible, programmable, and out of the way base for embedded systems development.

you also know that you can charge money for free software, right?

>>60684381
These >>60684984 >>60685006
Charge for service maintenance and training while having a bunch of nerds developing and testing the software for you. I'm looking at you Fedoras fags

-Make something so good and useful that people can't live without it.
-Put up a donation link.
-Blog post that you're going to stop updating it because you can't afford food.
-Cuck people into giving you money.

>>60684381
Follow RedHat's origin, offer tech support. If you software is good enough there is plenty of good money from that.

Just don't be nigger after you get the money.

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Someone please kick their asses

>>60685303
So... Chris Aljoudi?

>not using and supporting free software, but using proprietary licenses on anything you produce

pleb

Publish source code but charge for the binaries.

>>60684381
develop an awesome code and sell it
like a song or something
let people change it though
if you wanted somw fun you could plan its independent development un the code

>>60684984
Profit ?

>>60684381
I tried for about 5 years out of college to make it work, but never could do much more than collect paltry donations and work on half-assed projects for middling contract fees. Ended up as a sysadmin. Shit-tier hours but far better pay.

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>>60684381
red hat business model my friend.

the software is basically free. anyone can download fedora and its virtually the same as Fedora.

But, if you buy redhat your not buying the software, your buying customer support.

Red hat customers pay $1000's every year not for the software, but for the support.

if the customer has ANY issue with ANYTHING with red hat, you can simply call them and you basically have a team of programmers who will fix the issue.

They make millions every year from just customer support

>>60685040
>you also know that you can charge money for free software, right?
You can also charge money for air.

I've been telling this a million times on /g/, get your fat ass off the chair and start offering an installation of Linux desktop for a small company in exchange of tech support and maintenance. If you are too small and don't have enough employees then start with a commerce or hire local enthusiasts for little bucks.

Is all about marketing.

>>60684381
The main ways to make Money with Free Software are Tech Support and selling Hardware with it installed.

>>60684381
Do like Qt does: GPL / commercial licencing only.

>>60684381
Free as in freedom or free as in free beer?
Easiest way in either case seems to be to jump the cancer-train and introduce ads.
Yes, if source code is available some nerd can always remove the ad-blobs thus removing your revenue but thats where you have to beat them with marketing. For an example see Chrome vs. Chromium/Iridium market shares.
Generally Google is a prime example of how to make money off of free software.
Else you have voluntary donations a la Winrar or as others have suggested, offering paid support.

>>60688938
Google isn't making money from the software, they're making money from the advertisement which is targeted to different people according to the mined statistical data obtained from their services. Android and Chrome are just sources of statistical data and outlets for advertisement.

>>60688974
Ads which are bundled with their products thus making ads a part of the software...

>>60685866
But look like at Microsoft, they has customer support that costs 10 times more and where they do 10 times less and longer then Red Hat. Apple is the same, but costs less. So proprietary is better for $

patreon or charge for support.

A better model: Don't write free software - write open source software. Make it free for personal/educational use, but charge for commercial use.

>>60684381
- have community and enterprise editions (this is gay)
- offer some sort of service, usually hosting
- offer enterprise support

If starting small, kickstarter or patreon will probably be your only options though. The options above are srsbiz and require you to have some size and reputation.

>>60689448
Forgot to mention: pleb tax model
Charge for compiled binaries. Kinda like xchat for Windows or conversations (xmpp app) in the play store.

>>60684381
You can, just watch Richard Stallman, where do you think he makes money from? really really makes you think

>>60684381
Yes, making people free to redistribute the software and the source code doesn't mean you can't distribute it on paid platforms (snaps) or that you can't reserve rights on its name (Mozilla).

You may make your community donate for your work (Mozilla, Mastodon) and you may make an official shop with stickers, t-shirts, goodies, etc. (lainchan, EFF)

>>60684381
>but can I even make money off of it?
no

>>60684381
TAKE the botnet-pill.

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>>60684895
>make users pay extra for the source code.
you can, but that person would be entitled to modify it (a little) and then distribute it freely

>>60689042
> Make it free for personal/educational use, but charge for commercial use.

OP:
> I love free software
> free software

OUT!

>>60684381
Of course. Do what all the big packages do: grab all the info you can with your "free" software and sell it to the NSA for a good price.

>>60684381
Various ways:

Ads - being used less these days because abusive cunt advertisers ruined it for everyone.
Donations - usual method these days.
Support - easy to do monthly or per-contract
Training - MUNNAY CUM GET SOME LADS
"Nightlies" - people pay to support regular updates on a test version. Bleeding edge updates at the risk of corruption.

For small projects, donations and support is easy enough to implement.
Support less so because forums are now commonplace and casual users will just browse them.

In the case of the test versions, absolutely make fucking backups of data AND a fallback if the application fails to run.
The application should be run from a launcher in this instance, if the launcher fails to run the newest version, fallsback and reports to user on error.
EVERYONE does this fucking wrong for some reason. Even large companies like Google. *(those cunts manage to fuck up their STABLE branch, less so these days admittedly)

>>60684381
The “free” in “free software” means “free” as in “freedom”, not as in “free beer”. That is why it is often preferred to use “libre” (from the same French word) instead of “free” to avoid confusion.

The basic definition of a libre software is a software which source code can be freely accessed, modified and redistributed. Depending on the licence of the software, it can (LGPL) or cannot (GPL) be reused in proprietary software.
But there is no such restriction on the binaries made from the source code, so even if a software is under the GPL licence (the one that enforces the most the libre aspect of the source code), you can sell the binary version of your software.

One of the example I have in mind is the audio software Ardour; its developers give the user the choice: either you compile it from source, but they won’t help you doing so, or you can buy the compiled version.

This is basically how you can make money off of free software, but there are also other ways, such as selling services such as extended user support and all which are not necessarily directly linked to the software itself. Pretty much what >>60690342 explains.

Also, I spoke a bit about this with Stallman, and he suggested that if we want to be sure to make enough money off of software –depending on the case, of course– we can try to kickstart it, although I personally think (and Stallman seems to agree with me) that this is a risky move.

The real question is; what kind of free software hasn't already been made that YOU can program to be good enough for a small company/business/people to pay you for the support or training.

Donations is easiest with ads because of more passive income flow.
Training requires a team or small enough business where your profit will be low.
Nightlies is a nightmare.

>>60688974
he ment chrome was built using already existing free or open software

>>60684381

Software of a service and other addon things. I wonder why no one makes a linux creative suite and just sells art/images/custom brushes whatever.

>>60685866

This. Its big in the server room. And when shit goes bad you can have your admin a phone call away from the pros.

>>60685866
check'd
>anyone can download fedora and its virtually the same as Fedora.
>fedora is virtually the same as fedora
really makes you think

>>60685808
not bad tbqh:
https://ycharts.com/companies/RHT/profit_margin

Interesting. I always thought that this area is one thing free software people still need to solve. Maybe they still do.
But when I read stuff like
>>60690476
>>60690342
I also remember that the business model is inevitably heavily tied with the nature and use-case of the software and therefore not an easy problem.
Now of course, the question is, does the product/business model come first before the license or vice versa. It seems that one has to compromise with the other.
But then again, there are some other variants to GPL which can help with the decision process, although the differences between those, I am not familiar with.