A couple of years back I wrote a piece on Open Source business models and how users could/should become contributors called “There’s no such thing as a free lunch“. Since then I have presented my thoughts at a couple of conferences and gradually shifted the pitch towards people working in Open Source Geo as opposed to end users. The ideas may be useful to people trying to articulate to their clients and potential clients why they should sponsor features, contribute time and pay for support.
Last week I presented on this topic at FOSS4G in Bonn. I was able to include the results of the survey on the size of the OSGeo economy that I have been running and I also covered what a free lunch in Bonn costs.
