We have a color copier in the shed out back printing money. The whole software thing is just a clever ruse.

Actually, we have both an Open Source version and a proprietary version. The proprietary version adds a few nice features, primarily in automating installation of about 85 popular web applications, as well as some other features related to making money with virtual hosting systems. And, it has a price, and people pay us money in exchange for the software.

I don't know the author (I don't think, though maybe I've talked to him on our forums or issue tracker; we have 1400 or so paying customers, and many thousands of Virtualmin GPL users, I can't really keep up), but we're happy to have him as a Virtualmin GPL user, regardless of whether money changes hands, and not just because he wrote a really nice blog post about us. We have absolute confidence that if ever he does need the features that Virtualmin Professional offers, he'll buy from us. We've found the single best marketing we can do is to get people to try our Open Source projects...nothing else is as good an indicator of whether they'll eventually buy our product than use of Webmin, Usermin and Virtualmin GPL. Which is good news, since we have several million Webmin users that haven't bought anything from us yet.

So, perhaps the interesting question will be whether we can build a company bigger than Parallels (or even cPanel) on a mostly Open Source basis. We're doing OK, so far, and growing at a nice pace, but nothing anyone would point to as an overnight success. But, we'll see.

Anyway, the author is not mistaken. We do make money, and the amount of money that we make is increasing at a respectable pace. It's enough money that I feel like my initial optimism about the business was well-founded (I feel like I picked the winner from among my stable of ideas) but not enough that I can slack off. So, it's probably just the right amount of money for this company at this stage.