Would Mark Shuttleworth count as an Open Source Zillionaire (or whatever his current net worth)?
No, because he made his money selling SSL certificates.
@BG - are you trying to say that there’s worse? hehe 
"ITS NOT ABOUT THE MONEY, for crying out loud. its about doing something worth doing.
christ, some people just don’t get it."
Tell that to your kids when they get hungry. It IS about the money. It takes money to live after all. Some idealists or hobbyists just don’t get this apparently. I would imagine they have other jobs that pay the bills or they have no bills. Doing something worth doing is great. Doing something that someone will actually spend money on is a different story all together.
If an industry creates billionaires, it is not healthy.
“Where Are All the Open Source Billionaires?”
We the people, are the Open Source Billionaires, every one of us and all of us together. Open source creates value and leaves it 100% with the users, Microsoft creates value and keeps 30-50% (?) of it.
Well, according to myself, open source software is mainly about sharing ideas, not earning money. If my software is popular and I’am tired of my job, I would sell my expertise. It’s easy to share ideas when they are free and downloadable. Then, most of the developers that make open source softwares do it for the pleasure, not for the money. Their fridges are full, their job is enought for that. Some people use to collect stamps, other are coding for the pleasure, sometimes for the glory. And then, if it useful, it makes them even more happy !
Well said! I was just about to point out that there are open source billionaires, but then I reached the end of your post.
There probably won’t ever be any open source billionaires
Hmmm, what the hell am I workingon this Subtext crap for?
Isn’t the point of open source software to increase opportunities for customization? Most closed software programs have limited customization because it is limited to whatever the developers thought of at the onset of the project. Sometimes new features can be added, but they require a lengthy formalized process, or a significant investment by the customer. With open code and a little bit of talent, businesses can customize software to meet their individual needs.
Yes this prevents billionaires from popping up, but it allows many more people to sell their services instead of one organization selling a commodity. Open source software fits in to the service oriented economy better than closed source software. It really gives more IT people a chance to become independent workers, which in turn results in higher career satisfaction.
Why does everything always have to be about money?
Some of us (self included) already have enough money to live nicely for the rest of our lives. So let’s do good stuff and give it away for free. Funnily enough it brings the benefit of giving a nice warm feeling inside.
David
I think the key point that a lot of people have touched on is that you can’t make money DEVELOPING FOSS. Instead you make money using FOSS and selling it to people. There are companies out there that will set up a FOSS server system for a school or business. (I think IBM does this on a larger scale) There are some PDAs out there running on FOSS and they’re making money. There are companies like Novell and Red Hat who sell support contracts to their software. I heard a couple of car companies were using embedded Linux in their cars. Yahoo! runs their servers off of freeBSD.
So it’s very easy to make money off FOSS, just not from developing it. So if you’re making money off of it and want it to continue, you subsidize some of the development by making donations to the projects you depend on. This allows the projects to be funded and you get a tax writeoff and free software. Not only free software, but also standards-based software. And if you have a lot of money like Google, you can hire the main developer(s), but still harness the good of the developing crowd. Why would they develop for you to make money? Because they get the benefits of your contributions back to the software and they can use it in THEIR businesses.
Also, the distro diversity is not really harmful in the same way that non name-brand clothes doesn’t dig into the name-brand clothes’ market. I could buy from Red Hat or get the exact same thing as CentOS for free. So why choose Red Hat? First of all, they are the brand name. That carries a lot of weight in IT departments. But second. because when I have a question, I can call them instead of having to be in an IRC room or forum.
And here’s an example of what I spoke of:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3199690426.html
making money by selling slackware systems
Very well said Jeff.
I think there are more an more people who are trying(and dreaming) to cash in with the boom of open source software… same have suceeded but alot of these folks wont even reach the million dollar barrier mainly because of the number of competitions you are generating when opening your source code.
Thanks for answering the question, “Why are there no open source billionaires” so well 
What’s interesting to me however, is that was not the only question I asked. The other question, a far more interesting one to me, is how Microsoft makes a living in this space. Nobody seems to want to talk about that so much, which as an outsider I find utterly fascinating.
So an 80% gross profit margin is bad? Should we spare a thought for the millions of dollars they invested to develop their products? Just because software is easy to duplicate doesn’t mean that’s all there is to being a successful software business.
The gross profit on a telephone call must be around 99% – once the telco has spent a few million or more on infrastructure.
Also why should software be free exactly? When my mortgage is free then I’ll consider working for nothing. Until then I’ll leave the altruism to the well-fed Western bourgeoisie that can afford it.
Hi Guys,
I thinks the controversy comes from comparing two things that independent one from each other: making money and philosophy.
You can be millonaire in many ways. Bill Gates was only a lucky ( and competent ) at right moment, and there are many similar stories, like Henrry Ford. He just found a way to make money out of software, but you have to remember that in those days, the software was free, which was actually obvious since it didn’t exist enough hardware to make it profitable. Good for Bill. Bad for us.
Now you have the Open Source philosophy, where it’s supppose to be ‘free’, which is a complete lye. From the value point of view you’re obtaining CONTROL over the sofware, and an EQUAL level of competition with your partners. Just imagine how that would cost in the Windows world. I mean, how much money do you need to compete with Bill Gates. And that it’s a good thing if you want to write sofware. But, as spiderman said, with great power comes great responsability, so you provably end up messing with the system, learning bash, compiling driver and those kind of stuff that windows people will never do. And that’s exactly what Mr. Gates are selling them. He is selling them TIME and CONVENIENCE.
Saying that you can be billionare in the OS world it doesn’t make sense to me. If look at real world, there a lot of people that makes a tons of money from open source technologies. Think about it. How many people make money from farms, ( I mean, seeds are equal for everyone of us ) or taking minerals out the earth ( have shovel? ). Many millonares beagan just like that. The world around us are (thank god) an open source one.
Another thing with software ( or any kind of job for that matter ) is that NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO BE MILLONAIRE. And that is something many Americans don’t understand. A millonaire has actually a very complicated live. And when you choose not to being one, some other bussines models make more sense. You can be an employee, a modest consultant, just living from art, like painting or doing performing arts like drama and music, and WRITING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE. So here is where de OS model comes quite well. Many people do sofware like sex, just for the joy of it. Take that Bill.
One final piece of advice: If you want to be millonare don’t write software using the windows APIs. I can assure Bill Gates will want a piece of that amazing idea you have on your head. And will be usefull to have a choice when that happens.
Peace
Omar
Snap!
http://news.com.com/MySQL+hits+50+million+revenue%2C+plans+IPO/2100-7344_3-6179290.html?tag=nefd.top
Hi Hugh,
how Microsoft makes a living in this space
When you say “in this space” you mean “with proprietary commercial software”, correct? I think that proprietary and open-source software will coexist for a long time. Neither will be the death of the other. However, open-source will continue to erode the massive profit margins associated with proprietary commercial software over time.
As you can see, this won’t happen overnight-- but in the course of our lifetime, I expect we’ll see more and more hybridization of the open-source and proprietary models. It’s already happening, even at Microsoft.
Like it costs so much to use Windows Server technologies ? Anyone can singup at servepath or whatever and get a quad core, 6G memory, sql server for just $1000 monthly, cheaper severs with dual are also avaliable.
The company that can’t handle that has a real problem justifying their existance, their business model will never work.
Software companies with profit margins greater than 80%
Last available annual data for Red Hat:
http://ccbn.10kwizard.com/xml/download.php?repo=tenkipage=4163807format=PDF
Revenue: 278
Gross profit: 230
Gross margin: 82%
Just wait. Times of change - Change of Times. Zeno.