As open source technology makes a bigger impact on the information technology world, specifically software, questions emerge about this precarious business model.  There is clearly money to be made, and many companies have had great success while also delivering high quality products and driving innovation.  Cloud Tweaks outlines four of the major open source paradigms in “Open Source Business Models.”

The piece begins:

Open-source business models are employed by companies that rely on development of open source software to make a profit. These models are essential for these companies to remain economically viable. These companies are known as Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) or Professional Open Source Software (POSS). The following are some of the models that they use.

The article goes on to list and elaborate upon four models: Dual Licensing, Split Open Source Sofware, Product Specialization, and Platform Providers.  LucidWorks is a long time industry success story in open source search and has capitalized on a number of the listed open source business models.  The company currently focuses two agile products: LucidWorks Search and LucidWorks Big Data.  Support and services are the LucidWorks bread and butter and users will find a great deal of value in their support, consulting, and training options.

Emily Rae Aldridge, September 12, 2012

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.