How can I build a business around something I'm giving away for free? | Opensource.com

"One question I get often is: 'How can I build a business around something I'm giving away for free?' So, I wanted to attend the panel at SxSW this year called Don't open source like a n00b, focused on how to make a project or product open source. We've seen many projects successfully do open source—like Linux, Wordpress, and Koha—but how does a company like Booz Allen Hamilton jump from being a proprietary company to open sourcing their first product? Project Jellyfish was developed here in Austin by Booz Allen Hamilton; it's software that can be described as a cloud brokering solution. The team there realized that many vendors are open sourcing their applications and that a lot of the new, cool stuff is being developed in the open. So, they made the decision to make Project Jellyfish open source, hoping their developers would more interested in participating. But, they still had to convince their partners to spend money to develop something they were going to give away for free. How do you convince stakeholders that you want to spend company money and time on building something that in the end you can't sell? ..."