In the world of Open Source software, leading companies have evolved new business strategies in an attempt to do something that, until recently, seemed impossible - make money while giving away their products.

This has required the creation of new business models that are based less on the traditional, closed relationship between customer and vendor and more on philosophies of cooperation and openness between a variety of users and contributors.

Customer Model

The Customer model is the traditional business model, where a company sells products directly to customers. In the software industry, products developed under this business model tend to have the following characteristics:

• Proprietary, closed source
• Opaque planning processes
• No outside contributions

Partner Model

In this model, companies that produce software work with other companies that have particular specialties. For example, a software producer might work with consulting firms that have expertise in a particular area of business.

The software company’s expertise in development is enhanced by the consulting company’s expertise in the business needs of a particular business sector or market.

Community Model

The Community model describes many traditional Open Source software projects and related businesses. In this model, the product is developed by a loose alliance of people who have various requirements and motivations.

Some people may extend the software’s functionality to fulfill the in-house requirements of their organization; others might, on behalf of clients, implement connectors to the software to support interoperability between applications; others might be “core” experts who act as moderators and gatekeepers over the core architecture and distribution.

Commercial activity freely springs up around Open Source development projects. There is very little native organization regarding commercial activities; people are free to offer services (such as development, training, implementation and support) entirely independent of the core project. No company has exclusive rights to sell the software, support or services.

Ecosystem Model

eZ Systems has adopted a business model that attempts to take the best features of each of the models described above and blend them into the “eZ Ecosystem”.

From the Customer model, we take the advantage of a single professional business entity coordinating the core development of the product and providing base-line services (such as infrastructure for automatic updates).

From the Partner model, we make use of the expertise of other businesses, so that customers benefit both from professional service and support and specific domain expertise.

Because all of eZ’s products are Open Source, we support and encourage a community that both contributes to the development of the product and also influences the product’s development roadmap.

As with the Community model, eZ products have a low barrier to entry – it is simple for anyone to download, install and use the products and investigate the source code.

The eZ Community learns from each other, through the eZ forums and code and documentation contributions.

In addition, eZ Partners are usually active community members; in addition to providing technical expertise to the community, partners can also provide business experience and models for people who want to move from non-commercial activities to commercial activities around eZ products.