How can we do commercial open source

[yurim]

Hi guys,

I got an idea about a commercial model for open source software.
Since JBoss is one of the commercially thinking groups I really wanna hear your opinion about it.

It goes like that:
Lets say we have an open source project going. The developers compile the requests for new features and see that feature A is in high demand. They open a business case, set price for the feature and the interested clients can deposit a sum of money for the development of the feature. As long as the feature has not entered production, the clients can withdraw the deposited sum. For period of time, say two weeks, the developers do not disclose the accumulated sum. If the feature is really in high demand, they will get major part of the interested clients to deposit money and hopefully receive more than the set price. If the accumulated sum does not reach the set price, they publish the current status of the business case (the sum of money that is accumulated). Thus the clients will have clear understanding of where things are staying. The really interested will deposit more, others will have the freedom to withdraw. The success criteria can be changed and so on.
Once the accumulated sum reaches or surpasses the price the feature enters production and the deposits cannot be withdrawn, success criteria cannot be changed. All the source code is of course released as open source, preferably fully open sourced license as LGPL. Thus once the feature is completed the clients have complete freedom of how to use it.

Besides if business case is made for every feature of the software, the price per feature will be low and it will be easy to get a small interested group to pay for it.

It is basically pre-paid development adjusted for Internet.

[yurim]

Continued...

The financial side of it is close to what PayPal is doing, and I believe an OSS community site like SourceForge.net or Apache can provide the framework (this is a good way for them to make money too).

My hidden hope is that such a model will prevent the high fragmentation of OSS development because developers and users will be more likely to go with the commercially more successful options.
The projects themselves will be directed by the real needs of the clients.

Software shops would be interested in such a model because it gives them full freedom at low cost. Software shops are already trying to share the expenses of developing tools and components by going open source.
The first example that comes to my mind is Salmon LLC and SOFIA.
Software shops and companies like the Linux distros can be the interface to end customers and software groups like JBoss can be the framework/tool providers.

All this stuff is kinda theoretical, but I strongly believe that there can be a good commercial model for open source.

[davidjencks]

You might be interested to take a look at the Firebird Foundation which was recently organized to support people working on the Firebird database. Basically (as I understand it) quite a few firebird users are contributing a certain amount/month and they vote on which features will get support for development. I kind of like the idea of spreading around the cost of developing new features, yet providing direct support for it.