“Is it possible to make money on open source? As part of my
quest to find out, I interviewed Shawn Gordon, president and CEO of
theKompany.com, a software company dedicated to producing Linux
tools and productivity applications while expanding the Linux
developer base.”
“LinuxWorld.com: Let’s get right to the issue of the open source
economy. What is the mission of theKompany? How does it fit in with
what is developing as a whole new way of making money?”
“Shawn Gordon: That’s kind of a large question. From our
perspective, Linux is the great new frontier. We have this new
platform where we can build new things and do new things with them,
and kind of write them from scratch. And that keeps us from being
hamstrung by code that’s evolved for 15 years.”
“There are some really neat possibilities with open source. We
have been working closely with a lot of people in open source. Some
of the software we have been working on has been developed
internally. In some cases, we found products that were stalled and
helped them move forward. In some cases, we hired the authors, in
other cases we worked with the authors, and in some cases the
authors said, “Hey, just take it.”