Marten has compiled a nice list of 13 hybrid business models with open source in this blog:
"1. Software is free but we need donations and subsidies to survive (Apache Software Foundation, Eclipse, ObjectWeb)
2. Software is free but we sell ads and placements (Mozilla)
3. Software is free but if you embed it in closed source, you better pay a fee (Trolltech, DB4Objects, Funambol, MySQL, etc.)
4. Software is free but services are not (Covalent)
5. Software is free but on-going maintenance, monitoring and provision of binaries is not (Red Hat)
6. Software is free but some enterprise features are not (SugarCRM, Zimbra, JasperSoft)
7. Software is free but we built a closed-source product around it (EnterpriseDB, GreenPlum)
8. Software is free but hardware is not (Sun, Asterisk/Digium)
9. Software is free but we sell everything else on the planet, including closed source software (IBM)
10. Software is free but that's not our real business (Ruby on Rails, individual contributors, etc.)
11. Software is free but we regret it (Borland with Interbase)
12. Software is free because we dumped it and don't want to see it any more (any good examples?)
13. Software is free because we want to drive web traffic (Google GWT, Yahoo YUI)"
Open source and business is one of the topics I speak about at the current db4o Roadshow, starting last Thursday in Tokyo.
What I call "Commercial open source" is the win-win coexistence of an open source community and a commercial entity, which mutually benefit from each other's existence and activities.
Here are the 4 criteria which I use to identify whether something is open source or not:
- Availability of source code
- Use of a recognizable free software license (GPL, BSD, etc.)
- User driven, collaborative production
- Global spread of individuals
In the last few weeks I have focussed on "the fourth element - open source globalization", because I think this is one of the less discussed features of open source, but one which I think is particularly improtant and insiduous.