On September 13, 2006, Fenwick & West, LLP hosted a discussion on methods for monetizing open source.
The talk began with a layout of the different types of open source business models. There are some business that design products for open source challenges. These companies include BlackDuck and Palamida. These companies offer open source intellectual property management solutions that scan products for open source usage. Such diligence may come into play during mergers and acquisitions when examining intellectual property ownership risks.
There are also open source stack management products such as SpikeSource and OpenLogic, where the user determines whether solutions deployed work across entire stacks.
Open source businesses have low entry barriers. In order for a business to be worthwhile, there must be reduced marketing and sales costs. In order for such costs to decrease, an open source vendor may provide a community such as forge that sells advertisements, documentation, and other means that produce revenue streams. The community that offers a free download also allows people to easily test and use the open source product.
An open source provider should take advantage of people looking at the code. A supported forum may persuade people to contribute unsolicited code in exchange for the value received from software provided at no cost.
In order to monetize contributions, the open source business should monitor the assignment of copyrights to the business. Copyright ownership allows for duel licensing when new opportunities that are not well served by existing brand name companies arise.
Because the sales cyclue to enterprises is slow, the open source vendor must establish a product at a price point that makes it difficult for an existing vendor to come down to.
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