[kwlug-disc] the business model for open source

[Richard Weait]

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:29 PM, Kyle Spaans<3lucid at gmail.com> wrote:
> As a tangential (and possibly thread-hijacking question --  I'll be glad to take
> this into a new thread if someone wants) question:
>
> Has anyone seen or heard of a company/organization/individual hiring a
> contractor to work on some FLOSS code for them? What I'm imagining is:
>
> FLOSS project X is well used and well liked by company Y, but X is old,
> unmaintained, or it's developers aren't interested in feature Z that Y wants.
> Therefore Y hires a contractor to work on X for a while and implement
> feature Z for them.

All the time.

Everything from one-off bug bounties to temporary consulting gigs, to
the hundreds of developers hired at IBM, Novell, Google, Redhat, etc,
to work on F/LOSS.

The Drupal community is full of companies who develop modules, or
design themes, or deploy sites to survive.  You've met some folks who
do this.  Drupal is not unique in a thriving community, though they
are a good example.  Other communities that support commercial members
include OpenStreetMap, SugarCRM, perhaps dozens or hundreds of others.