digitalknowledgeworker.net

The spirit of open source has been distributed in uncountable subforms and interpretations and the "all for free intentions" of the web community have without a doubt contributed greatly to people's ability to access and work with digital media. However, not everything should be free - people have to eat and it's also nice for a family father to take his kids to the movies from time to time. If everything is free, how can twe earn our living?

When looking at some research studies on open-source, we find the common consensus that open source development is in no way near free. In fact, large contributers to open source products are corporations who employ core developers and contributers. The Linux operating system is to a large extent made available to people through integrators like RedHat or Suse - these companys commercially aggregate and enrich open source programs.

The same is the case for Drupal or Joomla. These two popular webCMS benefit greatly from the participation of companies that develop and sell Extensions commercially. For 3rd party developers the incentive is to create a unique extension that earns recognition whithin the community and to make it available for free to the public in order to get public awareness. It is finally not much less than advertisement for development skills.