Making money with free software
[This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]
The Linux Router Project is dead. So says Dave Cinege, the creator of the project. Though the project has been stagnant for some time, it still came as a surprise to see it officially pronounced dead, particularly given the bitterness of Cinege's eulogy for the project:
As of January of this year I have finally accepted the fact I will likely never be able to develop LRP into the operating system it could have been. A full 6 months later I'm forcing myself to update this page to reflect this. It is not an easy thing to give up on your life's work.
Apparently the cause of death was Cinege's inability to translate his work with LRP into a source of income.
While it's unfortunate that Cinege didn't benefit financially from his work on LRP, it's also an illustration that developers shouldn't depend on their contributions to free and open source software to land them a job or otherwise put money in their pockets. While a number of developers have, indeed, landed jobs as a result of their work with open source, it's hardly a guarantee of gainful employment. And it's true that companies may not even choose to publicly acknowledge the projects they've used to build their products. Vortech Consulting, for example, based Coyote Linux on LRP, but there's nary a mention of the Linux Routing Project on the Coyote Linux site.
The relationship between free software developers and companies is often uneasy. A recent bit of company bashing on the linux-kernel list led to this outburst:
The world is not going to end up with all software working perfectly and being free. Software is hard work, software tends to rot if you don't take care of it, there has to be an business plan better than
- Give it away.
- ???
- Make lots of money.
While Cinege and many others see commercial companies as parasites using their work for profit without any kickback for the original contributors, others see open source as a parasite on proprietary software. There is a fair amount of mistrust and misunderstanding going in both directions. Many unknowns remain in the equation of how free software and money-making enterprises will work together; this situation is likely to persist for some time.
It's very clear right now, however, that if a developer hopes to earn a living off of their contributions to open source, he or she will need to come up with a workable plan beyond releasing software and hoping for job offers, contract work or grants to fund further development efforts. Even then, as with any entrepreneurial enterprise, it's no guarantee that they'll be able to pull it off. And, it's possible that someone else will come along and do a better job of capitalizing on your work. Part of releasing software under an open source license is giving up full control of the work.
Writing software is just one aspect of what makes a software company,
open source or otherwise, successful. Brilliant software isn't enough to
ensure a steady flow of clients. Developers who want to make a living
off of their open source project will also need to wear the marketing
hat, the sales hat, and so forth to turn a freely-available project into
money. Some developers aren't interested or adept at doing those things,
which is fine. In that case, they need to align themselves with partners
or a company that will do that work for them if they hope to turn open
source development into a money-maker. That, or resign themselves to the
idea that someone else may do it without them.