9/4/2007

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Selling open source risk management, plus other services.

These days, corporations using or selling open source software are looking for assurances to protect their assets. This is where the desire to seek out open source insurance has come into play. One company provides code audits to make sure that all the code is in open source compliance, best practices training, and insurance to safeguard potential profit loss for using the insured open source product. (Open source insured products are protected only from loss due to mergers, settlements, and other related causes of profit loss.)

The company also ushers in services for those providing services for open source companies themselves. See, a company can actually find open source profits by simply providing services rather than supporting the development of software itself. Some examples:

Staffing services: Provide coders as needed for companies looking to expand their current open source project(s).

Legal help: Legal advice and attorneys on a retainer for those open source groups or companies needing assistance from experts on open source licensing law.

Fund raising: Not all open source companies are in a position to begin fund raising endeavors for projects that they'd like to support. Fund raising services allows them to write a check for a business development expense.

Whether it be starting and managing your own open source project for business development or simply building something up to support other open source projects in the growing support industry, there are a number of options out there.

The key is to understand how you or your company can take existing assets to take on an open source mindset with eventual profits in mind. As you can see above, it's not all that difficult to do. You simply must understand that profiting from open source software is not as straightforward as you might see in the closed source world. It takes a solid strategy, understanding of building services around the given away product itself or merely bundling in a system around open source products themselves.

Some open source purists will argue that the vision behind the open source project should be the project itself and the community that will benefit from it. But these days, it's common practice to have companies working with the community to both give back to the company that initially invested in the project.

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