Open Source Business Models: a Taxonomy of Open Source Firms' business models

If you’re looking into starting a commercial Open Source company, here’s an in-depth look at the various current business models.

Within the context of the FLOSSMETRICS project we are performing a study on the business models adopted by companies that are leveraging FLOSS source code, and how the model changes with respect of licenses and commercialization approaches.

In this post I present a draft of the result of 80 FLOSS-based companies and business models, conducted using only publicly available data. Feedbacks and suggestions are welcome!

It still seems to me that we haven’t found the ideal commercial Open Source play, but this is still a relatively nascent industry. It’s remarkable how far we’ve come so fast. There’s still a lot to figure out, which is part of what makes it so exciting to me,

–jeremy