Marten Mickos (pic left) is perhaps best known as the former CEO of open source database vendor MySQL. Mickos is currently the CEO of open source cloud vendor Eucalyptus and he’s trying to mimic the success that MySQL had with his new company.
So how does an open source company make money?
During a keynote at the OSCON conference on Wednesday, Mickos delivered a very simple formula.
“There are some people with lots of time and no interest in spending money and there are other people with lots of money and no interest in spending time,” Mickos said. “So we’re trying to sell something to those with money and give something to those with time.”
Makes good sense to me – there will always be users that won’t pay for software for whatever reason. For some users there may not be a need for support and services either. But the fact that there are people that will pay because they have a need, is what continues to enable commercial entities to prosper with open source software.
