[HanoiLUG] OSS - why it does make money

[David Tremblay]

Hi

A product that is similar and competing with MS sharepoint, alfresco
(www.alfresco.com) is offering its product under GPL licence, the code
base is the same between the "enterprise" version and the GPL version
however if you download and install their product it is provided as is
(read GPL) but if you pay for the support, the code is guaranteed.
They'll chase and kill bugs on your code.  Then they offer a range of
support services : training, helpdesk, customization, skinning etc.
etc. 

I like very much this idea since people who pay for the guaranteed code
are supporting the open source product by their support request to
squash bugs....

the best of two world!!!


PS: if you are working or planning to work/develop with this product, I
may need you in the near future please write to me!!!!




Le lundi 02 juillet 2007 à 15:59 +0900, Nguyen Vu Hung a écrit :
> On 7/2/07, Steve <steve at hivemind.net> wrote:
> > I used to work for this company and perhaps its a great example of how
> > big (F)OSS
> > has already become
> >
> > KnowledgeTree, developed in Cape Town by Jam Warehouse, is one of the
> > leading open source business applications in the world, having clocked up
> > over 350,000 open source downloads.
> >
> > and here are some products (some of you might be interested)
> > http://www.knowledgetree.com/products
> 
> They have 3 product lines:
> 
> 1) KnowledgeTree Open Source : completely FOSS
> 2) KnowledgeTree SMB ( comerical )
> 3) KnowledgeTree Enterprise ( comerical )
> 
> Quality control I observe in this project:
> 
> -----------------
> Quality Assurance Strategy
> 
> KnowledgeTree Open Source
> Quality depth is community driven
> 
> KnowledgeTree SMB
> QA undertaken by internal quality engineers and based on stable community code
> 
> KnowledgeTree Enterprise
> QA undertaken by internal quality engineers and based on stable community code
> ----------------
> 
> We can see how they make money. The FOSS one is the test bed, features
> are added ( by the company or the community )and tested here. If the
> company feel it is good enough for enterprise, they have the right to
> add. Then they sell well tested sw for money.
> 
> IMO, this is quite common model in FOSS world

-- 
David Tremblay

Information Technology for development analyst
Legal reform assistance project

*emails:*
david at ngowiki.net // david at roy-tremblay.net // david at lerap.org

*Phones*
Mobile : 84-4-0912 474 995
SIP  : 1-747-004-8537
skype : ict4ngo

*Webs:*
www.lerap.org   // http://blog.ngowiki.net  // www.hanoilug.org


*Messaging:*
jabber network :ict4ngo at jabber.org