“This is how I understand the open source movement. The software
is freely distributed, and modifiable according to the end user’s
specific requirements. However those modifications, extensions,
developments and the support and or training that accompany them
are not always going to be catered for internally. Outsourcing
development on top of the original package or support thereof will
cost money. Another way open source vendor’s make money is by
providing a fully-functional base product (as in the case of Sugar
CRM’s powerful web-based application) that should for all intense
and purposes meet the needs of the vast majority of their
clientele. Comes the day when said clientele wants to extend the
functionality of their CRM solution to include, for example, a bulk
SMS function, they pay $ 200 for the downloadable extension. It
makes sense to me to pay for functionality that you know you need
as opposed to paying a fortune upfront for a proprietary product,
60% of which you never use…”
Related Story:
Moneyweb:
The Real Deal on Open Source Software(Mar 31, 2006)