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I've been wondering for a while if a company can work on purely open-source software and profit from the software itself, rather than only from the stuff that h
by anon4 13y ago
I've been wondering for a while if a company can work on purely open-source software and profit from the software itself, rather than only from the stuff that happens around it. The idea that I've been thinking over is a subscription for voting on features. That is, a user of the software will pay some monthly amount and get some number of votes for directing what new features will be implemented. Making sure that votes work properly and oft-requested features by people with low voting power still get implemented timely is one problem. Another is for companies that just want one bug fixed or feature added and aren't interested in long-term contribution. They could be easily outvoted by long-term contributors.
Has something like this ever been tried and how did it work or fail?
- bpowell 13y agoUnicon Inc, http://www.unicon.net/ http://www.unicon.net/, partly does this. They cater to higher education with software like uPortal, CAS, and uMobile. All of these software products are open source, but they make money off of a support model like this. Universities that pay them for support can vote on features that they want worked on. I do not work for them, but my employer does use them for our student portal.