I'll probably write up a more substantive post on open source business models at some point. We follow a fairly traditional model with training, consulting, and support being primary offerrings. If you look under products and services at http://10gen.com you will see pricing, etc.
In terms of best-practices, the first hurdle is to get your product used and demonstrating value. To do this you have to listen to your users and help them out to demonstrate that value (which is why the whole team is on our mailing list and IRC channel all the time). Generally when it comes to someone purchasing services from us, they have already tried out the product and may even have it in production. This is vastly different from a lot of closed source software where you end up in a long sales cycle just trying to convince customers to use it.
For databases, the training-consulting-support model works well. For other products, some other model may be more appropriate. We've also talked (both internally and externally) about closed-source addons/tools/features. Additionally there are potential revenue streams from hosted /cloud offerrings.
Comments
I'll probably write up a more substantive post on open source business models at some point. We follow a fairly traditional model with training, consulting, and support being primary offerrings. If you look under products and services at http://10gen.com you will see pricing, etc.
In terms of best-practices, the first hurdle is to get your product used and demonstrating value. To do this you have to listen to your users and help them out to demonstrate that value (which is why the whole team is on our mailing list and IRC channel all the time). Generally when it comes to someone purchasing services from us, they have already tried out the product and may even have it in production. This is vastly different from a lot of closed source software where you end up in a long sales cycle just trying to convince customers to use it.
For databases, the training-consulting-support model works well. For other products, some other model may be more appropriate. We've also talked (both internally and externally) about closed-source addons/tools/features. Additionally there are potential revenue streams from hosted /cloud offerrings.