Is it possible to make money by giving something away for free? John Powell, CEO of Alfresco Software, believes that the open source software market is worth $60 billion. The value doesn't accrue from the revenue that it generates. Rather, that value is rooted in the cost savings for his customers. Looked at from this angle, open source is the largest tech industry, Powell believes. That was the basis for a decision he made when Alfresco began developing an open source alternative for enterprise content management and other tasks.
June 25th 2008