I have spent the better part of the last several years trying to spend my own time and money on developing and prototyping ideas for different products, some of which didn't or won't pan out. I have however come up with a few, from piratical needs or otherwise, that would be rather great to produce.

The problem, I work in information technology in a support services role. I do have a small business that I have been using to cover the costs of my inventions and maintain progress of different products.

What is the shortest path from zero to millions of dollars with little to no effort?

The Internet of course.

As a follow-up and the next in a short series and what seems to be a developing theme, I plan on exposing the Money making methods for what they really are, scams.

Alright, so after a short respite and much thought, here goes with the third part of the unintentional multi-part series on the software business model and how it interacts with FOSS.

In Martin Owen's most recent article on the subject in continuation of this series, he pointed out several good points that I would like to address. So lets jump right into it:

"Proprietary software isn’t useful to the community, it’s useful to individuals."

I seemed to have touched on something in my very recent Making money with Linux? article. I was pointed to a rebuttal written by Martin Owens by some fellow developers in the FOSS community.

Before jumping right into this, I would like to make a cople of things clear. First off, I do not claim, nor have all the answers. Secondly, I am glad for the differing opinions. I firmly believe that posing the question and having different opinions will lead us all to the answers.

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