September 9th, 2008
Add-ons build business models
One common complaint from open source critics is how you’re going to build business models when most users won’t buy support.
Well, you wait until they need something and sell it to them.
That’s how Acquia, the commercial arm of Drupal, wants to do it, working with TopNotch Themes to add their support to Acquia’s paid version of the community software.
They’re not giving away the store here. They’re just creating some special themes for the commercial distribution, code-name Carbon, while continuing to sell their current product line and doing custom work.
Turns out you can use blogging software to do a lot more than blogging. Here’s a TopNotch theme for a sales site. Here’s one for a church.
One point that confused me was their “buy-out price,” about ten times the normal retail. Turns out if you pay the big bucks, they won’t sell that design to anyone else. Oh.
The point is there are many ways to build value beyond the obvious. Smart analysts realize this.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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