Monetizing your Open Source Project (without being evil)

From Google Summer of Code Mentor Wiki

Presentation is here: http://www.hep.ucl.ac.uk/~adamd/docs/GSoC08AdamAlbert.pdf

This session run by Albert Santoni and Adam Davison of Mixxx with an audience of about 30.

We started with a presentation covering some existing case studies of projects which are making money in various ways. This presentation is attached to this page.

We actually didn't really have enough time to have the discussion properly so we're planning to have more tomorrow.

Brief summary of what we did get to:

• Some people offered specific suggestions for Mixxx, for which we are grateful.
• There's no one be-all/end-all solution for monetizing your open source project. It's highly dependent on what your software is and who your users are.
• MusicBrainz has an interesting approach to monetization: They have a lot of data and they license it under Creative Commons Non-Commercial, and then charge a fee to commercial customers, including some very big names. This has proved highly profitable for them.
• Amarok (Like Rhythmbox) is receiving a percentage cut of all music sold through integrated media store(s). Although the money isn't so significant for Amarok, the music store pays for a developer who works part time on integration and part time on other functionality.
• Other projects including OpenAFS find their funding is from corporate sponsorship, either generally or for specific feature development. Tor is similar although many of their sponsors are in the public sector due to the nature of their work.
• A Sakai Foundation mentor raised an interesting point of what to do when you get an infusion of cash orders of magnitude above your previous level of finances, as happened to them. This can create challenges in terms of management skills and project governance.
• Monetization is not necessarily turning your project into a for-profit business.
• Additional notes on the meta-topic of Projects_and_profits were written

* Additional notes for this session are available here: MonetizingOpenSourceSoftware (Thanks to AhtiK!)

Areas we would still like to cover:

• What more innovative ideas could be tried?
• How do you handle the transition from group of volunteers to an organised project with accounts and structure?
• What other experiences to people have?
• How can we collaborate better in the future?

This page to be updated with more info from tomorrow's session.