I was at The Fifth Annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) yesterday and I ran across several companies that pay programmers to write open source software. Here’s a summary of the companies in no particular order:
- Trixbox – produces open source management tools for the Asterisk PBX, which they pay their programmers to write; they sell support for the management tools, which includes the option to backup your config files to their servers in case your server goes down
- Ingres – an open source database company that pays programmer to work on the database and gets money from businesses that wish to extend the database but want their changes supported
- ClearHealth – writes open source web-based tools for hospitals and doctor’s offices to facilitate billing, scheduling etc.; sells support and assisted setup to these organizations
- Coraid – makes NAS devices; wrote and currently maintain an ATA-over-Ethernet driver in the mainstream Linux kernel
- ImageStream – makes Linux routers using their own hardware; they modify the kernel’s network layer and write drivers for their hardware that they open source
- Zenoss – writes open source management tools for IT departments; sells support
I found it very encouraging to see that there are lots of companies out their that will pay programmers to write open source software and have found a business model that makes this sustainable. I think the above list shows that one’s dream to write open source software for a living can be a reality.
