That's a fallacy.
The majority of open-source sponsors are selling closed systems or services to sponsor their "free software" involvement. Google doesn't have a business model around "free software". Neither does IBM or Sun.
I'm also not Mozilla and my apps would probably never get in front of 40% of all Internet users. Even if I'm that lucky, it's probably not going to be a desktop app that's used to search for stuff.
To get paid for customizations, your software also has to be really popular for businesses (consumers don't pay for that, they either endure it or search for something better).
Did I mentioned that I don't live in Silicon Valley nor in Cambridge, but in an Eastern European country? So training is off.
I already mentioned consulting, but then I would be a hypocrite if I promoted the free software ideology while working on the worst kind of closed software, wouldn't I?
Anything else?
> That's a fallacy.
> The majority of open-source sponsors are selling closed systems or services to sponsor their "free software" involvement.
Red Hat, Canonical and a large chunk of IBM GS wouldn't be able to sell those services with proprietary products - the OSS licensing of various Linux OSs, Apache, etc. are the basis for them being able to have an audience to sell their services.
I agree with you re: Google. They're not a service business and could have written their own OS or used a proprietary one and not affect revenue.
Not sure what licensing fees would have done to their overhead costs in the early days.
Maybe you should have a look at this again... I've been on a trip to Romania for training (about architecture of some specific piece of OSS) at some point. As long as you can provide good training, it could work for you too.
And the software that makes Google their money is proprietary, unless you can show me the link to the AdWords server source.
I think they basically just do it through consulting + a little support and training. (See http://phusion.nl/services). But since they wrote Passenger and REE, I'm sure they can command a very high rate.