How to Generate Revenue With Open Source Software

Open source software is typically written by volunteers and distributed at no cost. This doesn't mean you can't generate revenue from open source software, but it does mean the normal commercial software revenue sources won't always work. Depending on how the software is licensed, open source may just mean that the source code is freely available to developers to modify, which allows the opportunity to use that code as a part of other projects.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Sell the Software

1. You can sell open source software, even if you haven't written it. First refer to the license agreement that comes with the software. If the license explicitly allows it or doesn't explicitly or implicitly disallow selling the software, you can sell it.

2. Pitch the software to companies. Companies often choose software from trade journals and may not know about open source alternatives. If the software can save them money or do a better job, they may buy it.

3. Assist in installation. If the client's IT department is not familiar with open source software, they may not know how to install it. Installing it or assisting in the installation is an easy way to generate revenue.

Provide Support and Modifications

4. Provide online support. Open source software is great, but it's often difficult to find support for it. While people can sometimes find help online, they'll almost as often get frustrated. This is not good when a company's operation depends on this software working.

5. Advertise support for an open source project you know well. Selling support is a valuable source of revenue, as it brings very specialized knowledge to a company that may not otherwise have access to it.

6. Write open source software or modules with modifications to existing open source software. Companies don't always have the money to staff full-time or professional contract programmers and often look to save money by using open source software. Since they're not paying support to a software company, any modifications they have to make will either have to be done in-house or contracted out.

7. Create open source documentation for a fee. If you can understand the source code, you can write documentation to benefit both the open source community and your clients.

Generate Ad Revenue

8. Run a popular website about open source software. Provide free services, or charge for services, and generate traffic.

9. Place banner or text ads on the site and collect the ad revenue.

Tips & Warnings

• Some open source projects have notoriously bad documentation. When the programmers themselves are the only users of the software, documentation might seem like a silly thing to write since they can simply read the source code. However, once others start using the software, accurate and complete documentation will be needed.