Discovering the perfect formula for profiting from an open source project is not easy. There are countless variables that must be considered, many of which determine early on whether or not a project will be successful with the community using it.

Most software developers have little interest in entrepreneurship, but an open-source software project will survive and thrive only by delivering value into a market (users) with business partners (contributors) and against competitors (other open and closed source software). If you want to run a successful open-source project, it helps if you consider the key questions that apply when defining a commercial business model. I'll expand on Chesbrough's and Rosenbloom's list of 6 themes to demonstrate why.

Openads, formerly known as phpAdsNew, is one of the more successful open source development projects. Its online advertising software is used by many thousands of domain owners who want to make a profit on their Web content by selling advertisements.

A soft-spoken Filipina in her early twenties was recently named project leader of one of many open source community projects run by the Apache Software Foundation.

The Open Business Foundation (OBF) operates on two premises: that the open source development community makes good business sense, and that small businesses can be more successful if they band together with each other to share resources of all kinds.

"The Open Business Foundation (OBF) operates on two premises: that the open source development community makes good business sense, and that small businesses can be more successful if they band together with each other to share resources of all kinds."

There are a vast number of fantastic open source projects out there, though for every one that is widely adopted, there are many that remain cloaked in relative obscurity. How can the open source development model best be leveraged to take advantage of community feedback, ideas, and testing, and ultimately gather code contributions?

Open source has become standard in Silicon Valley, with nearly every software startup planning to release at least some code. So far, they've found five main business models:

I have noticed a trend developing in the business models of successful open source companies. These companies are implementing a business model that is based on dual licensing their software.