By Linda Leung, VNU Net
Linux startup Moonlight Systems has turned the open source
business model on its head and decided to charge customers a
licence fee for its applications software, but give them the entire
source code in return.
Bobby Mukherjee, the company’s founder, said: “Unlike most open
source companies we don’t give all our software away for free and
make revenue on support. Customers can license our software and we
give them all our source code.”
Among its products to be officially unveiled in the autumn are
tools to enable companies with large Linux-based server farms to
update their software remotely, and a back-end email server aimed
at ISPs. “The applications will be native for Linux and all the
code and source code will be given to the customer,” said
Mukherjee.
Stacey Quandt, an analyst at Giga Information Group, said
Moonlight’s revenue model is “questionable” and “goes against the
grain of the whole open source movement”. She believes the
products will address a need in the market, but fears the company
may be misinterpreting what the open source community is trying to
achieve.