user: How can I convince my boss that Open Source can actually help our company rather than "giving out work for free"?

assistant: Open source can be a great way to improve your company’s products, reputation, and innovation. However, not everyone may see the benefits of open sourcing a project, especially if they have concerns about losing competitive advantage, exposing vulnerabilities, or compromising quality. To convince your boss that open source can actually help your company, you may need to address these common objections and show how open source can bring value to your business.

Some of the arguments you can use are:

Open source can help you attract and retain talent, as developers often prefer working on projects that they can share and learn from with others.

Open source can help you gain feedback, bug reports, and contributions from a large and diverse community of users and developers.

Open source can help you increase your brand awareness, credibility, and trust among customers and partners who value transparency and collaboration.

Open source can help you reduce costs, avoid vendor lock-in, and leverage existing solutions instead of reinventing the wheel.

Open source can help you foster innovation, creativity, and experimentation by exposing your project to new ideas and perspectives.

You may also want to provide some examples of successful open source projects that are relevant to your company’s domain or industry. You can also suggest some ways to gradually embrace the open source community, such as using open source tools, contributing to existing projects, sponsoring a project, or releasing a small or non-critical component of your project as open source.

user: Can you provide examples of companies which benefited from providing only open source software?

assistant: Yes, there are many examples of companies that have benefited from providing only open source software. Here are a few notable examples:

Red Hat: Red Hat is a software company that specializes in open source software solutions, such as the popular Linux distribution, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat has built a successful business model around providing support, consulting, and training services for its open source software products, and was acquired by IBM in 2019 for $34 billion.

MySQL: MySQL is a popular open source relational database management system that was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008 for $1 billion. The company built its business model around providing support and services for its open source database software, and its success helped to pave the way for other open source database systems such as PostgreSQL.

Mozilla: Mozilla is a non-profit organization that is best known for its open source web browser, Firefox. The organization has built a successful business model around providing search engine partnerships and other revenue streams, while keeping its software free and open source.

WordPress: WordPress is an open source content management system that powers millions of websites around the world. The company behind WordPress, Automattic, has built a successful business model around providing hosting, support, and other services for its open source software, while keeping the core software free and open source.

Docker: Docker is an open source containerization platform that has revolutionized the way software is developed and deployed. The company behind Docker, Docker Inc., has built a successful business model around providing enterprise-grade support and services for its open source software, while keeping the core software free and open source.

These are just a few examples of companies that have built successful businesses around providing open source software. By embracing open source principles, these companies have been able to tap into a large community of developers and users, reduce costs, and innovate more quickly than their proprietary counterparts.