There's no question that commercial versions of applications that are built in adherence to open-source development procedures are proliferating. To qualify as a true open-source product, software is expected to be licensed under the GNU General Public License. A number of software vendors are relying on these open-source principles to build and maintain their software and services offerings. Longtime real-time operating system vendor Lynx Realtime Systems recently renamed itself LynuxWorks to reflect its focus on embedded Linux.
Open source makes our software easier to customize.
We can do things more quickly, in terms of development, deployment, and customization. Akopia plans to make money both through selling Interchange and by providing managed and life-cycle services around the product. Zelerate doesn't charge for its software but instead is making money from services. The company is planning to introduce an open-source version of a warehouse management product early next year. Open Source is not mandatory.