What reasons for software developers to write open source projects?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Open source: Why or why not?

What key reasons for software developers can you list so they will decide to make their products as open source (I don't mean products just for fun but real products)?

Answer 1

Because their business model revolves around support for the product, not actually selling the product.

More users (especially enterprise users) = More potential for support + training profit

Another use would be the open source version is used to build a base for and get free development done that they can transfer to a closed enterprise version (See RedHat/Fedora and above comment about support + training)

Answer 2

1) task may be too much for one developer 2) to gain exposure

Answer 3

There are many, many reasons why you might want to make a project open source. Here are two that noone's mentioned yet:

• Brand development/marketing: "Oh, you use OpenFoo? I wrote that."
• Giving back to the open source community: you've (presumably) derived great value from other open source projects, and this is a way of returning the favour.

Answer 4

Because of software economics deflation. This is a well-known scheme of big ologopolies like Oil in the past and many other commodities sectors who first play price inflation so that it creates a boom and so the mass market then drive the price down so that small companies cannot sustain the cost reduction.

When small companies are out, there is a concentration in the industry with mostly giants.

At term software industry will become a commodity market where software is consumed like electricity that's what Google, Amazon, Microsoft are fighting for. Ex-Sun CEO Mac Nelly has even claimed that it should become like Telecom Industry where softwares will be "free" because delivered with the commodity. He said there's no need ofor software companies in the future. He wanted to kill software through deflation. That's the true reason why Java was free.