The Business of Free Software

The Business of Free Software
Aditya Banerjee

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
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Source: http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/floss-license-slide.html
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Too much freedom?
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Internet changes the dynamics
The Cathedral & the Bazaar
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Before
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After
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Some major players
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Making money from free
Really?
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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.html
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Web browsers: Usage share
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Source: http://www.thecounter.com/stats/
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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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