Commercial Open Source Software using PHP: The gradual but certain revolution

By Evan Leybourn.

Published by The Open Source Developers' Conference Papers

Format	Price
Article: Electronic	Free Download

Writing Open Source software as a small business can be very difficult.
You can't sell your software in a shrink wrapped box on a store shelf nor
can you sell per seat/cpu licenses to use this software. So how do you
make a profitable business writing software that you have to give away?
This paper will discuss:
* Support/service contracts and how to develop and market them.
* Service level agreements for large companies and government.
* Combining hardware and software as a package for clients who need a
complete solution.
Each point will use examples drawn from the Got_It Image Management
Software by DAMIT Australia, which we have been heavily involved in
writing for the last 18 months. This paper will also touch on the
requirements for writing commercial code, the technologies you need to use
and why they are used.

Keywords:	PHP, business

Article: Electronic (PDF File; 330.376KB). Published by The Open Source Developers' Conference Papers.

Evan Leybourn

Evan Leybourn is the head code monkey/director for Looking Glass Solutions. He started this business three years ago and it has grown into a well respected, established business specialising in open source technologies. With a meaningless piece of paper in Comp Sci from UNSW he has worked with the Department of Defence, NFP and commercial companies developing and extending software to meet their requirements.