How does an open source project get funded?

Question

Other than large entities sponsoring a project, such as the Apache foundation, what are other ways that full-time open source developers (specifically those on products offered free of charge) receive funding for their projects? Obviously there will be donations that will trickle in but from what other channels do developers receive more steady income?

Answer 1

Venture Capitalism and "Angels", although VC money is tough these days

Answer 2

There are several possibilities:

• dual license a library-like project with GPL and a commercial license. If companies need the library they need a different license then the GPL, and that specific license (including tailoring the library) can be sold
• get famous from your free project. If you produce a good project, you earn reputation which could get you on a payroll of a company, probably related to the project you created
• join projects like Google Summer of Code. While not very much in money, it does help.

Answer 3

I know a lot of them (especially smaller ones) don't count their open source development as steady income. Personal projects gone public for the most part. Some of them are also developed inside companies that sponsor open-source development.

Answer 4

We maintain and develop an open source web application system, while running a company around it. We make our income from projects built on top of the open source system and provide commercial support for the project as well.

Answer 5

Sponsored change requests are also common. Some companies might find an Open Source project interesting, but it is missing some critical feature. The company might choose to sponsor the new feature by paying the original developers to include it, or assign some internal developer to create the feature and then donate it back to the community.

Answer 6

Some of the ways revenue can be generated from open source projects are by:

• Commercial marketing
• Providing support for the software
• Training companies which use the software
• Receiving donations
• Getting grants awarded by various open source software foundations

Answer 7

From my experience, several alternatives are :

1. Having advertisement on your open source project website. However, there are many consideration needs to be taken. Please refer to Financing your Free Software with Google AdSense
2. Build your reputation through open source project. This will increase your chance in winning the bid for contract based software project.

Any way, the most item of having the above 2 to work is, write a good open source software, which everyone want to use it.