When JBoss was acquired by Red Hat, the publicly acknowledged conversion rates were 3% (JBoss) and 10% (Red Hat). People start making assumptions about business models based on driving downloads and user community size. And that's where the problem starts.

So you want to make a small fortune in open source software? It's simple, the joke goes: Just start with a large fortune. The open source revolution began at least two decades ago, but businesses and programmers are still struggling to understand the best way to share wonderful code and pay the mortgage.

Continuing the ongoing discussion about open source software business models, Rich Sharples of Red Hat’s JBoss division weighs in on an issue I have with Savio Rodrigues’s categorization of open source users: namely the fact that it does not take into account the value of the application in question.

Open source businesspeople are frustrated that their business models is not bringing them enormous returns. Microsoft perceives the threat of open source and wants to neutralize it.

Many of you have likely heard of or even used open source software at one time or another, but I’m constantly surprised at how many people are unaware of the benefits and opportunities open source software presents to us, especially being poor university students.

HP has been quirky over the years when it comes to open source. It has been, traditionally, a company that supports open source -- especially in larger enterprises. While large businesses are a major focus for HP -- and it has supported open source in other ways -- a "smaller business" line of open source products has been a long time coming.

I was talking with a friend this morning who used to work at JBoss. He made an interesting point: Rob Bearden, the COO at JBoss, was perhaps the biggest reason for JBoss' success. Not because he was out proclaiming freedom to the world: that was Marc Fleury's strength and he did it extremely well, bringing visibility and downloads to JBoss.

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:

Many small business owners have never heard of open source software. That's unfortunate because in many ways small businesses are ideal environments for open source applications.