The Business of Open Source

The open-source community gained momentum and support during the nineties thanks to the mainstreaming of the Internet and the support of organizations such as the Open-Source Initiative. Along with the growth of open source have come new strategies to sustain the projects and their communities. In an economically driven society, many open-source projects are struggling to maintain their purely nonprofit existence. Numerous solutions have been presented, with some open-source projects evolving into products and others building businesses related to the open-source project to help provide people power and funding. This three-part series, “The Business of Open Source,” explores the business of maintaining open-source projects and the businesses that grow out of them.