Most software developers have little interest in entrepreneurship, but an open-source software project will survive and thrive only by delivering value into a market (users) with business partners (contributors) and against competitors (other open and closed source software). If you want to run a successful open-source project, it helps if you consider the key questions that apply when defining a commercial business model. I'll expand on Chesbrough's and Rosenbloom's list of 6 themes to demonstrate why.

I promised I’ll answer shawn42’s challenge in the first mailbag edition that I will explain and outline a business model for the future, usually involving free software or copyfree software. As it turned out, I acutally did this already for Space Fighter Ace, an upcoming online shoot-em up game. Unfortunately the business plan for the Space Fighter Ace project is lost in the shuffle.

Last week, I wrote about the somewhat-vague definition of the open core business model, and how it compared to the dual-license business model. Open core, like dual licenses, are all part of the whole "ways-to-make-money-faster-with-open-source-software" genre of business, but they are not the same thing.

GoAhead Software Moves to Open Source Business Model. GoAhead® Software today announces that it is shifting its business model and technology strategy from its proprietary SAFfire product to an open source software model. Simultaneous with the move to open source, GoAhead is announcing the acquisition of Avantellis from Emerson Network Power.

It has been said there is no such thing as a 'true' Free Software business. Blue GNU interviewed the Ada Core Technologies team to learn about the company that has been a 'true' Free Software business for over 20 years.

Companies like Red Hat and Novell base a lot of their Linux business model on providing support to their big enterprise customers.  This model has been very successful, but no one has applied this, or any other, business model to consumer desktop Linux with great success.

Free Software developers fall into two main categories: those that stand by the principles behind free software - patent-free, license-free and unrestricted distribution and those that are simply happy to compromise to some extent, for example to download libdvdcss to watch DVDs, or to install proprietary software such as Skype, on the basis that there is simply no (or no better) alternative

Some GNU/Linux desktop deployments require secure authentication from a Windows Active Directory server. Gerald Carter, a long-time member of the Samba team and an enthusiastic free software developer, now works for Likewise.

I’ve talked in the past about a number of “open source” business models. There’s the MySQL “dual license” model, where all the software is available under an open license but a proprietary license can be purchased.