Recently while working on a Windows Based Web application for time sheets it occurred to me that while Linux is a great passion there seems a real business model issue.

How Do I make money with Linux?

Several things come to mind:

• Sell Linux Based Hardware
• Support for Linux based systems
• Hosting Solutions such as VPS
• Application Service Providers

While these are great, there is one item that leaves so many businesses out in the cold and continues the cycle of Microsoft pain for business users. Software development. Most developers in the community, much like myself, believe very much in the open source model. Free and open source software provides options in a Microsoft dominated market.

The Microsoft hold on the small and medium business (SMB) world is a very hard cycle to break. A very common case is the small business owner that wants to change to something other than Windows, however due to their business critical applications only running on windows they are chained to Windows.

So how does the software publisher business model help break the cycle? While the open source community provides so many great things, free market business does as well. The two systems working together is a solution for bringing Linux to the SMB users.

While so many developers, including myself, volunteer their time to Linux projects and making free software better, the simple fact is we all need to make money. However creating software as a business requires a level of production protection that is not usually accepted in the Linux circles. Compiled and protected sources are a bad thing for software freedom and progress, however they are good for free market business.

Commercial software being generally closed source is a necessary evil. The incentive to make money inside the Linux community will help to break the cycle. When businesses find there is money to be made by producing Linux based applications for busness users, it will help bring Linux to more desktops. While I very highly advocate the Free and Open Source movement, I am suggesting that closed source software for sale does have it's place, and in fact may help bring Linux to more desktops.

Perhaps there is a happy medium between Free and Open Source Software and the Closed Source software model, tell me what you think.

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