In my third installment on the topic on open source, I would like to discuss its business model when there is profit involved. Not all projects have a return over investment, which makes many wonder why start an open source project in the first place, but you need to be a programmer with the correct mindset in the first place to work with others and renounce to ownership of any work you do — almost a socialist/anarchist mentality. The latter gives control of the code and the end product to a controlling 501(c) foundation — for example, the Linux Foundation.

The projects that do make a profit are usually sponsored and/or controlled by corporations — for example, Red Hat. These corporations make a revenue from training and support — not from the open source product itself, which is free. In other words, you can use the product, but you have to pay if you need support — a strong capitalist mentality.

In both cases, there is an ever-growing number of third parties that provide training, certifications, support, other services and numerous user groups.

The open source community is often very open to help others in user groups and forums.