ROI in a GPL World, Jeff Eaton at CMSExpo

By Nancy Garrity | Published Apr 30, 2009

GPL as a business model was the subject of Jeff Eaton of Lullabot's session at the CMS Expo.

He began the session by explaining the difference between free as in speech and free as in beer.

Jeff then went on to outline what it means to release software under the GPL license including the right to get the source code and the right to customize and distribute the software.

There were several questions from the audience and it was clear that the question of what will come of MySQL after the acquisition of Sun by Oracle was a common concern.

Take away points included:

GPL breeds GPL
If you distribute, others can distribute
Your code may be a product but it may also be a tool you use to deliver a product
Sell your brain, the understanding of people and problems is your most valuable asset

Jeff went on to outline various ways to make money in the GPL world.

[Editor's Note: See our detailed article Open Source: The GPL, Your CMS Project and You]

About the Author

Nancy Garrity, the featured Keynote Speaker for the Thursday luncheon at CMS Expo 2009, has been working with content management software for more than ten years. As a member of the Documentum consulting team, she worked with customers to design and develop a wide range of content-based applications. She later went on to start the Documentum Developer Program, a service that provides a variety of resources for application developers.

As the Community Manager for Alfresco, Nancy’s goal is to foster an environment where community members “feed-themselves” by growing the community, providing an infrastructure that facilitates contribution and recognizing achievement.