> Take a look at JBoss.com - they make money hand over fist, by
> providing services to the companies that use the freely available
> JBoss. Also here is the latest from RedHat:
There's a bit more to the story.
JBoss received $10 million in venture capital in 2004. Apache and
Eclipse received an infusion of capital and software from IBM.
(IBM also plowed more than $1 billion into Linux.)
Not everyone received a large cash investment and open source companies such as
XML Global, Lineo, Trustix, and Stormix shut down.
Red Hat's revenue is not only from services and training. It uses a dual
licensing model. A Red Hat client subscription starts at $179 for a year. For
the server, it's $1499. Sleepycat and MySQL also use the dual licensing model
(commercial open source licenses). Here's a commentary about it:
"The Economics of Commercial Open Source"
http://www.galatea.com/economics.html
