A lot of people have the wrong belief that it is not easy to make money with open-source software. This is mainly because this type of software is available at no cost and it can be downloaded by anybody.

However, if you are ready to think creatively, you will discover the availability of various money-making opportunities. This article will focus on how you can provide service and support for open-source software to make money.

If you want to provide service and support for open-source software to make money, you should take a look at businesses such as Oracle’s MySQL, Linux Red Hat, WordPress, and SugarCRM. These are examples of businesses that are presently making money in this area.

• Starting an Open Source Business
• How to Sell Open Source Software
• How do Companies Make Money From Open Source Software?
• Make Money Contributing to Open Source
• How to Make Money With Open Source Hardware
• Paid Open Source Software
• How Can You Make Money From Open Source Software?
• Can You Use Open Source Code For Profit?
• How do Open Source Developers Make Money?
• How Open Source Software Make Money
• How is Open Source Competing With Paid Software?
• Commercializing Open Source Software
• Open Source Software Examples

Starting an Open Source Business

If you’re bootstrapping your open source company, here are three tips to help you prepare for that ultimate transition from development project to fully fledged business.

1. Don’t do this on your own

Take a look at most developers’ personal projects and you’ll find that they’re usually very personal. We have a tendency to base our side work on the one thing we can’t base our daily work on, and often this is why so many open source side projects quickly fade into obscurity.

Read Also: Remote Silicon Valley Software Jobs

The developer focuses so much energy on writing “elegant” software that they forget to release usable software. We can be so bent on our own use-case that we forget to build something for a realistic user base.

That’s why having at least one developer partner when building an open source product is so important. Having someone capable of questioning your decisions and giving new perspectives is invaluable, and it also makes you accountable to someone.

Projects with multiple developers have a much higher completion rate because team members tend to keep each other from slacking off.

2. Have a revenue model in mind from the beginning

Businesses that don’t have any way to make money aren’t really businesses at all. If you plan on turning a profit with your product, then you should have revenue strategies in place from the beginning, and build your open source company around them. Here are seven of the most common open source revenue models:

• Razor/razor blade: One of the most popular revenue models is to give the initial product away for free, but charge for added features that many users need. This most often manifests in open source as a store to purchase extensions to a platform.
• Hosting fees: This model is common among blogging platforms, like WordPress and Ghost, where customers can purchase turnkey website hosting with the platform developer. Although hosting services can be very profitable for closed source products, there’s a flaw in using it as a main source of revenue with open source platforms. Because everyone has free access to your source code, any third-party provider can offer their own hosting solution and potentially undercut you.
• Closed-source enterprise version: If your product has enterprise users, offering them a commercial version of your software with enhancements for their class of needs can be very lucrative. Magento is a prime example of this revenue model.
• Partner programs: Because open source software is often used as a tool for developers to do their own client work, many will pay to be placed on your website as trusted partners, ensuring a rise in inbound prospects.
• Training and certification: How do you ensure that your partners meet the requirements for recommendation on your site? Through for-profit training and certification programs. Higher tiers of partner programs often require an exponentially growing number of certified developers and salespeople on an organization’s staff to qualify.
• Product management and support: If your product solves a complicated problem, chances are at least one full-time employee is needed to manage it. Enterprise customers are more likely to outsource that management to your company, or to pay for a full-time, dedicated support person.
• Resellers (requires the GPL): Some companies may want to integrate your product into their own offering, or even slightly modify it and flat out sell it as their own. If you release your product under the GNU General Public License, those companies will be legally obligated to either open source anything using your product, or license the software directly from you.

3. Release early, improve regularly

One can argue the finer points of lean startup methodology, but not the fact that open source software sees a higher rate of iterative releases than other products. Community debugging and code contributions are the hallmark of open source, and the longer you wait to benefit from them, the more your open source company suffers.

We made this mistake at PencilBlue, not releasing our software until it was a fully functioning, top to bottom CMS. While you could build a complete website with PencilBlue on day one, we quickly found out that it wasn’t the type of website that a huge chunk of our potential users (namely, in the enterprise sector) wanted.

As a result, we’ve spent the better part of a year fulfilling feature requests from enterprise and other users. Granted, we would have spent the same amount of time adding features, regardless of when we released, but we would have spent less time changing or backing out functionality that we wrongly assumed users wanted.

The benefits of releasing a market-ready product didn’t outweigh the efficiency we would have gained by quickly releasing an open source prototype.

Even if you want to make a business out of your open source software, your initial release doesn’t have to be a minimum viable product, as it usually does with commercial software. You can release a functional prototype and allow the community to help you shape what ultimately goes to market.

How to Sell Open Source Software

Recently, developers have started thinking about how to sell their open source software. We’re going to highlight a few common ways to make profits from open source software.

Paid extra features or functionalities

Some companies make money with open source in this way: they distribute their software for free, but charge money for additional features, functionalities, or updates. We can’t call such approach selling open source software.

As we mentioned previously, customers feel most comfortable paying for only the services they utilize. Which is why, charging money for extra functionality is attractive for a number of reasons. First, it’s quite clear what additional functionality customers are paying for.

Second, customers can save money on deployment and troubleshooting when these services are included in paid packages. For instance, GitLab distributes its developer tools in three editions. Their version for enterprises includes premium support, file locking, and advanced solutions for remote teams, and is billed per user.

Charging money for additional functionality works well for software designed for blogging, HR, collaboration, customer management, and other similar needs. WordPress provides their Premium and Enterprise customers, for instance, with additional websites and an additional workforce to maintain their WordPress sites.

While the fee per developer is quite high – $5k USD per month – customers receive certified professionals assigned to specific technologies and businesses.

Paid certification

If software is popular enough, companies can offer certification opportunities for specialists who want to validate their knowledge and skills. Getting certified, as a developer, is quite useful for a number of reasons. First, it’s a great opportunity to differentiate yourself among other specialists with the same skills.

Second, developers realize the importance of networking with mentors and groupmates. Finally, a developer’s certification leads lend them additional professional credibility and even promotions and can boost a company’s image.

Open source giants including Magento and Red Hat offer a variety of certification options. In fact, Red Hat offers around 30 different kinds of certifications in Red Hat’s products as well as PaaS, business processes, deployment, and system management. Magento issues certificates for skills related to Magento development and solutions.

How do Companies Make Money From Open Source Software?

1. Donations

While not typically used by large for-profit companies, some individual developers make pretty good money by taking donations for their open-source work. Patreon, GitHub, and Buy Me A Coffee are all popular platforms that allow individuals and businesses to help support open source projects that they use or want to see maintained.

The downside to this model is that it’s really hard to build predictable, sustainable income from it. Some people will heavily use and benefit from updates while never paying the creators, and this frustrates those who do support the project. If you’ve ever asked your boss if you can start paying for some of the free, open-source software you use at work, you know how tough this can be to sell.

2. Hosted Version of the Product

Some open source projects allow you to run their software on your own servers for free, but they’ll charge you for a hosted version. For example, you can deploy n8n.io to an AWS or DigitalOcean machine and keep it running on your own, or you can sign up for their hosted version and avoid the hassle of maintaining servers.

While this tactic won’t work for every open source project, it’s a very popular option. It offers a clear delineation between the paid and free versions of the product, and can be bundled with other features like support and training.

The downside is that your margins are never going to be very high. If you charge too much, users will be able to justify the cost of maintaining their own servers.

3. Paid Support or Courses

Red Hat’s model of open source software financed by paid support contracts and on-premise configuration takes more human hours, but it allows them to improve the user experience dramatically. When companies look at the cost to troubleshoot open source software, it’s usually a better deal to sign up with the people who made the software rather than learn it themselves.

If you want to make your software more accessible, you can sell training at a lower cost than hands-on management and support. For example, The Linux Foundation helps maintain hundreds of open source projects and makes money through its training courses.

4. Open Core

Adam Wathan started Tailwind UI as an open-source CSS library in 2017. After two years, he went full-time on the project and has now made $2 million in revenue from the project.

While Wathan’s story is exceptional, it highlights how a free, open-source project can make real money by charging for extras (in Adam’s case it’s premade UI components). I would call Tailwind an open-core product because while the framework and features are all free, you can support the project and save yourself time by buying extras.

Some open core projects do this by charging for features that larger customers are more likely to need like advanced user management, specialized integrations, or SAML access (there was a good thread on Indie Hackers about this model recently). This is a solid strategy if you know enterprise users will need certain things that individuals and small companies won’t.

5. Dual Licensing

Similar to the open core model, some open source projects offer a dual license. This might allow a small, independent developer to use the software free, but companies using it for a profit must pay a license fee.

Companies can decide which license is appropriate and pay Qt as needed. While some companies might abuse this license structure, lawyers will look at things like this in detail if the company ever decides to sell or go public.

6. Selling Other Products

As in Automattic’s case, they offer a free, open source product (WordPress.org) and a suite of related and unrelated proprietary products to generate revenue from. This model is easiest to manage if your other products support the open source one, but some companies raise money from venture capitalists to fund the open source tool’s growth while they figure out other products to build.

The downside to this model is that building and maintaining multiple products is a lot of work. Small teams will find this distracting and it might mean the open-source product suffers.

Make Money Contributing to Open Source

So, how can you, as a developer, earn an income while utilizing all the advantages of the open source movement?

1. Getting sponsored by a company to work on an open source project

One of the best ways to earn money from open source is getting sponsored by a company. Many high-profile open-source projects also require expert insights or someone who can do a particular job professionally.

For example, major open source projects have senior members who are paid by interested parties to keep working on the project. Linus Torvalds is a good example. He can easily be supported by big companies such as Google, Microsoft, etc. as they are using the open-source product developed by Linus.

Getting this kind of sponsorship is not as hard as it may sound. All you need is expertise and the ability to present yourself well in the open source community.

2. Getting paid for working on a particular feature

If you are not getting full-time sponsorships, don’t worry, as companies also look for talent that can work on a particular feature or an extension. The key feature is important for them, and hence they are willing to spend rather than wait for an open source developer to come up and solve it for them.

Remember, in the highly competitive business world, time is money, and if they can get a task done fast by paying money, they recognize the potential for profit.

3. Offering support to open source projects

Open source projects might be easy to grab, but they are not easy to manage. Odoo, an Open Source ERP and CRM is completely open-source. Anyone can get it free from their official website. However, while the installation process is well-documented, it does require a professional touch to master.

Many companies also require customized modules for their open source software, and this creates the potential for a developer to get paid while working on an open source solution.

4. Develop a freemium product and take advantage of the freemium model

A freemium model works by developing two versions of the application. The basic version is free to use and is also available under open source. On top of it, an advanced version, generally known as a premium version, is created.

This way, companies can make money on their product, as users who like the free version are more likely to purchase the premium one. You as a developer can easily add value to their premium version and earn hefty amounts.

RedHat, a popular Linux distro, uses this approach. You can read more on the topic in the Quora post.

5. Do consultation work on open source projects

Consulting is one of the best ways to make money with open source projects. It also helps you to gain important community visibility that in return can help you gain more projects. You can offer consultation in the following ways.

• Provide consultation to big projects with the help of your expertise. You can help big companies train, support, or provide custom consultation regarding a particular technology.

• Verify the abilities of other developers by looking at their work. You can choose to look at the open-source projects they have worked on and gauge their level of expertise. This unique talent of understanding others’ works can help companies that are working on big projects.
• If you already have a good presence in the market, you can easily get training requests or even speaking requests. If you are really good, you can even land a request for writing a book on a particular technology and get paid for it.

6. Ask for donations

Donations can also help you earn extra money in addition to your main job. You can use LiveEdu as a primary platform to get donations. All you need to do is stream your open source project development on LiveEdu, and build followers that are willing to support your endeavor.

7. Sell Instructional Material

Last, but by no means least, you can sell instructional material. Many open source projects don’t have good documentation. You can write the documentation, and try to pitch it to their developers. If they pay, great, and if they don’t, you can just submit it for improving the solution.

You can also write instructional materials such as tutorials to help improve the solution. You can either submit it for free or ask the owners for some payment. In both ways, you can only benefit, improving your exposure in the market.

How to Make Money With Open Source Hardware

Of course, there is the obvious way, which is to design, build and sell your own product. But we will show you that there are many ways to make money with a business based on open-source hardware.

1. Designing & Selling Your Own Product

Of course, the first way to make money that I have to mention is to create your own product. Which means designing a product, manufacturing it in a factory and selling it to your audience. First, let me talk about the the typical argument against that way to make money.

Because it’s all open-source, there is a chance that people will just take the design files from your website and make the product themselves. Or worse, some other guys living in countries where manufacturing is cheaper will just steal your design files and produce & sell your own product, but for much cheaper.

This is a valid argument, but in practice it doesn’t happen that much. Most of your audience don’t want to build the product themselves, especially if it’s a complicated one to build. Sure, they will use the files that are available for free to get insights on your product. They might make minor modifications, or use it as a base for another product.

But only a few of them will build it from your design files. Also, even if another manufacturer is building your product for much cheaper, it will usually be at the expense of quality. And that will only help to build your own brand, according to DIY Drone’s CEO Chris Anderson in his book Makers: The New Industrial Revolution.

Back to the product creation, you will find a lot of articles and resources on this website to design, build and market your own product. Yet, even if it is the most straightforward way to make money with an open-source hardware business, it is also the most difficult way if you are a beginner.

It usually requires a lot of effort and investments before you have anything to sell, even if crowdfunding platforms can help a lot on the last point. This is why I also advise looking first at other ways to make money if it is your first business.

2. Creating Accessories for Other Products

Instead of making your own product starting from zero, another way is to build accessories or add-ons for already existing products. The most common example would be Arduino shields, which are add-ons boards for the Arduino platform that add functionalities to Arduino projects.

Even if it also involves design & manufacturing, as for the creation of your own product from scratch, this way of generating money is much simpler for several reasons. First, the product that you aim to create is generally much simpler to design than creating your own product. Wether it is a 3D-printed case for a BeagleBone Black or an Arduino shield, it limits the number of components and design efforts.

You are also guided by the products you are creating accessories for. Again, creating a shield for the Arduino platform requires that you follow the specifications of the Arduino board in terms of size & IO pins. Manufacturing is also easier for the same reasons: usually manufacturers are used to produce Arduino shields for example.

Finally, and the most important, marketing & sales are also so much easier when it comes to accessories & add-ons. You are creating a product for an already proven market, so you don’t have all the hassle to create an audience in a completely new market.

3. Educating People by Writing About Your Knowledge

Running a business based on the open-source hardware model doesn’t necessary require to sell physical products. You can perfectly propose your knowledge as information products, like tutorials or eBooks.

This allows you to create a community around your ideas and your craft, and to get trust from your audience. This is for example also what Chris Anderson did with his community about open-source flying drones, DIY Drones.

Then, when you have created a community around your craft, you can think about proposing paid products. These products can be books that organise the ideas and projects found in your articles in a structured manner. You can also use affiliate links (for example via Amazon) to gain a commission on the products and components you feature in your articles and tutorials.

4. Getting Consulting Work by Participating in OSHW Projects and Getting Noticed

You don’t need to have a business to start making money if you are interested by open-source hardware. Sharing your craft online and providing value to your community can draw some attention on you. And that is a good way to get high-quality proposals for consulting work from companies all around the world. These proposals can be for freelance writing, circuit design, software development.

5. Starting your own Hackerspace

Finally, the last one is something I have never tried myself, but some people mentioned it on the web so I had to share it with you. Open-source hardware, the hardware revolution & the maker movement are closely related with hackerspaces.

These are physical spaces where members can meet up and use all the equipment (soldering iron, measurement instruments, 3D printers, CNC machines ….) in exchange of a monthly fee. This definitely requires a significant upfront investment if you intend to start a new hackerspace. But it is also an idea on how to make money with open-source hardware in mind.

Paid Open Source Software

Lots and lots of libraries and other tools for programmers are open source for non-commercial use but cost money for commercial use. There are many examples of this type of licensing.

• Juce, a cross-platform UI framework in C++.
• Mongoose, a simple web server written in C meant to be embedded within C/C++ applications.
• Potrace, the world’s most popular C code for converting raster into vector.

In cases like this you obviously get the source code in that you already have the source code you just have to pay someone if you use that code in a product that you sell or you are breaking the law.

For a case in which you can’t even see a source unless you buy some product, some properietary programming environments are like this. Say, Matlab, for instance. You don’t get access to all of Mathworks’ sources but a lot of Matlab is written in Matlab and you are free to inspect that portion of the source code once you buy Matlab. Mathematica is probably similar.

How Can You Make Money From Open Source Software?

The following are a few ways of generating income from these types of software programs.

1. Provide Support

Although open source applications can be downloaded at no cost, they may sometimes be complex software that requires some technical knowledge. Expert knowledge may be needed to set up the application. Server maintenance will also require the attention of someone who possesses the right knowledge.

If you are the creator of the application, a lot of the users will have to come back to you and you can make money by providing support services for them. You can charge different rates for different levels of support.

2. Create Enhancements

If you are a programmer, you can create add-ons and sell them to the users of the open source application. The WordPress blogging platform is a very good place to provide this type of service. This platform supports independently created themes and plugins that are useful for a variety of purposes. Although there are a lot of free WordPress themes online, many entrepreneurs have built successful businesses just by creating and selling themes.

3. Sell Manuals

Another way to provide service and support for open-source software to make money is to make documentation available for users who are ready to pay. Some applications are not easy to use if the documentation is not available. For example, there are certain WordPress plugins that will help you to set up an e-commerce website.

If you want to use these plugins without the documentation, it will take a longer time to set up your website and you will not be able to make use of certain features. You will have complete access to the necessary documentation if you pay for a premium license.

4. Provide Consultancy Services

You can easily position yourself as a consultant if you have expert knowledge about certain open source software platforms. You can market your skills if you are a developer or an IT professional who has experience in the installation or customization of any open-source program.

You can always find companies that are looking for experts to help them with their projects. You can find this type of jobs on freelance websites such as Freelancer, Elance and others. You do not have to be the creator of the application to generate income with it.

Can You Use Open Source Code For Profit?

Absolutely. All Open Source software can be used for commercial purpose; the Open Source Definition guarantees this. You can even sell Open Source software.

However, note that commercial is not the same as proprietary. If you receive software under an Open Source license, you can always use that software for commercial purposes, but that doesn’t always mean you can place further restrictions on people who receive the software from you.

In particular, copyleft-style Open Source licenses require that, in at least some cases, when you distribute the software, you must do so under the same license you received it under.

How do Open Source Developers Make Money?

1. Sponsorship by a company

This can happen in several ways.

• Permanent job to continue work on a high-profile project. This is probably the rarest case. If you are a senior member of a major open source project, someone like Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum or Theo de Raadt, then you will probably be able to continue working on your project while being financially supported by a major company such as Google or IBM. Although this mode of support is relatively uncommon, you don’t necessarily have to be an open-source superstar to secure this type of funding; many Linux kernel developers are partially or wholly funded by companies like Red Hat.
• Paid for specific features or extensions. Some companies offer bounties to have specific features implemented in open-source software that they use for business functions. Often there is no need for the feature to remain closed source, so significant code is contributed back to the community. This has been described as the beekeeper model of open source development. In some cases the additional features are required to remain proprietary but are based upon an open-source codebase. In both cases, open-source expertise is a clear advantage for a developer.
• Your day job code can be open-sourced. A related case is where aspects of the code you write for a company in the course of your day-to-day job may be open-sourced without harm to the company. The code may or may not be based on an existing FOSS project. Generically useful tools and libraries may often be released in this way, and anecdotal evidence suggests such projects can often accelerate once they become volunteer-driven.

2. Add value to existing projects

An individual or company can position themselves as a primary provider that adds value to an existing open-source project or projects. There are many examples of companies who provide a service by packaging, layering, combining or extending existing projects. They broadly fall into two categories.

• Support. Enthought adds value by packaging a custom Python distribution focusing on scientific libraries. Redhat and the other Linux distributions add value by collating and testing many disparate open source projects, and providing easy-to-use install and upgrade mechanisms. These companies sell support services in the same way as many proprietary providers do.
• Freemium model. Under this model, a basic version of the software or service is free; additional ‘premium’ features normally cost extra. Sleepycat software provided extra features for the Berkeley DB under a proprietary license. Cedega provides a reimplementation of the Windows API under Linux, released as a mixture of free and proprietary code. This model need not be open source; Gmail for organizations is one example of a service that offers both free (as in beer) and premium options.

3. Offer code under a dual-licensing model

A powerful approach is to offer software under two alternative licenses, a copyleft license requiring modifications to be released back to the community if the software is distributed, and a commercial license allowing the use of the software without open-source restrictions. This approach has been successfully applied by large projects such as Qt and Open Office, as well as to small one-off projects.

4. Consult

Open-source work can provide a way to gain valuable community visibility.

• Showcasing of abilities. Being able to verify a developer’s work and competence by looking at open source projects they have been involved in is a powerful draw for prospective employers.
• Reputation building. Having a high-profile reputation in an open-source community can lead to speaking engagements, training requests or book writing offers based on your expertise.
• Being the expert. Being a significant player in a technology that companies need, means being in demand for custom consulting, support and training in that technology. This can lead to the creation of a specific job niche in your area of expertise.

5. Auxiliary channels

Finally, income can be derived through auxiliary channels such as advertising (as Stackoverflow does), donations, or through the use of nagware techniques in the software itself that aim to annoy a user into providing financial contributions to the author. These techniques are not specific to Open Source development models. For example, they are often used by non-free shareware products.

How Open Source Software Make Money

As open source’s popularity increases, finding funding for projects is still experimental, but there are a few common options available.

Raise money for your work through crowdfunding campaigns or sponsorships

Finding sponsorships works well if you have a strong audience or reputation already, or your project is very popular. A few examples of sponsored projects include:

• webpack raises money from companies and individuals through OpenCollective
• Vue is funded through Patreon
• Ruby Together, a nonprofit organization that pays for work on bundler, RubyGems, and other Ruby infrastructure projects

Create a revenue stream

Depending on your project, you may be able to charge for commercial support, hosted options, or additional features. A few examples include:

• Sidekiq offers paid versions for additional support
• Travis CI offers paid versions of its product
• Ghost is a nonprofit with a paid managed service

Some popular projects, like npm and Docker, even raise venture capital to support their business growth.

Apply for grant funding

Some software foundations and companies offer grants for open source work. Sometimes, grants can be paid out to individuals without setting up a legal entity for the project.

• Read the Docs received a grant from Mozilla Open Source Support
• OpenMRS work was funded by Stripe’s Open-Source Retreat
• Libraries.io received a grant from the Sloan Foundation
• The Python Software Foundation offers grants for Python-related work

For more detailed options and case studies, @nayafia wrote a guide to getting paid for open source work. Different types of funding require different skills, so consider your strengths to figure out which option works best for you.

Read Also: How to Make Money Through Job Portal

How is Open Source Competing With Paid Software?

Since you can’t compete on price, then compete on all of the other selling points that the software has:

• features
• quality
• effectiveness
• integration with other software
• service
• support
• direct selling

Basically, you do what every other company does when they’re in price competition: keep pace, or change the game.

Commercializing Open Source Software

In a world of smart devices and mobile users, software developers/integrated software vendors (ISVs) face new challenges in commercializing and operationalizing their products. Even the best product, hitting the market at the right time, needs a viable process and associated technology for monetizing and maintaining the solution.

1. SOLUTION PACKAGING: Realize that all users are not alike. Your app may need to operate in mobile, local, or cloud-hosted models. Or your users may respond to a “basic” vs “pro” package that gives them access to more features. Let the market show you what works, and don’t be afraid to re-adjust and adapt as you go.
2. USAGE TRACKING: Your software should “report in” on where it is being used and when, what version, and whether the license is fresh. You cannot rely on downloads since these can be copied and deployed on multiple systems. Your software needs to be “activated” after install, checking to verify that it has a valid multi-user or single-user license. And if the product is cloud-based, you need visibility into usage trends to allow you to scale to handle the load.
3. LICENSE MIGRATION: Use that awareness of usage patterns to allow for users who update or replace their systems. Your license needs to be portable to whatever is their current device – as long as they are not actively using it on more devices than you licensed them for.
4. COMMUNICATION: Give fair warning if a license is about to expire. There should be advanced notice – particularly if you are providing a SaaS model, where your service may be part of a larger ISV solution. You need to engage with that vendor long before their license expires. Even a single user deserves the opportunity to renew before their app stops working.
5. LICENSE ENFORCEMENT: Once you have warned users, use a gatekeeper to enforce compliance. The easiest way to force license compliance is to simply have the software prompt with a reminder, or take a payment for a renewal, as it launches. Waiting for an audit is longer and less effective.
6. LICENSE MANAGEMENT: Don’t be afraid to lean on a 3^rd There are companies out there with license-management solutions. Don’t reinvent the wheel if you can buy what you need off the shelf.
7. AUTO-UPDATES: Bugs happen. Hackers get creative. Expect it, and have a plan for managing updates from the moment you launch. You can’t rely on users to come looking for a patch, so you need a built-in mechanism to prompt them (and sometimes force them) to perform required upgrades.
8. COMPATIBILITY: Expect to test, and test, and re-test. The list of “compatible” devices and operating systems and browsers and hardware is a living thing. The ones you launch with will grow and evolve, and you have to evolve with them to stay relevant.
9. RETIREMENT: Know when to say NO. Everything has a life-span. Your product needs to keep marching forward, so you will need to consciously cut off support for older versions and devices. That is a hard choice, but your limited resources have to be reserved for the most popular/recent versions. Sell users on the benefits of an upgrade, and don’t look back.

Open Source Software Examples

Some widely used programs, platforms, and languages which are considered open source are:

• Linux operating system
• Android by Google
• Open office
• Firefox browser
• VCL media player
• Moodle
• ClamWinantivirus
• WordPress content management system

This means that any person can access the code and modify it to create new extensions, patches, or solutions. Linux, for example, is the example par excellence of open source, and new programs can be created from its nucleus or kernel.

Another example, the opening of Android, is exactly what permits any developer to create compatible applications. Consequently, thousands and thousands of applications exist to meet almost any need.

The fact that WordPress and Firefox are open sources implies that there exists an enormous variety of compatible plug-ins that were independently developed.

Bottom Line

Making money from open source has always been a bonus for the developers. We went through some of the best ways to make money from open source projects.