Well having run an open source project now for going on 4 years and having worked on other open source project as well I thought it would be a good idea to post about the ins and outs of running open-source projects and our business. I often get asked, how do you make money if your project is open source? Well good question, short answer is directly from the project revenue such as donations we don’t. Donations to open source projects are very few and far between. No one should ever take on an open source project unless you have a personal attachment to it and want to see it succeed. The ways we have found to make money and support the open source project have changed since I started the company and continue to evolve. However it has always been in some service that is tied closely to the project..

I started working on Open-Realty before I founded Transparent Technologies. It all started, when a local real estate firm that I had done technology work for in the past, asked about how they could allow agents to enter listings on there website without having to use HTML or learn a WYSIWYG editor like FrontPage. After looking around online I found one very prominent commercial script, and this open source project called openrealty being run by some guy named Jon Roig. We looked first at the commercial solution, and decided quickly that it had a number of drawback, all of which the license prevented us from working around. The openrealty project was at the time abandoned and Jon was trying to find someone to either take over the project or sell it to. I decided at that time, if we were going to use the project that I may was well take it over and start work back up where Jon had left off. I contact Jon and we agreed that I would take over the project, and thus my life as lead developer for Open-Realty began. Since that time, Open-Realty has undergone countless versions, bug fixes, and feature enhancements. We have gained new opensource developers and also lost some of the orgional programmers as they have moved on to other projects and aspects of their lives. The community surrounding the Open-Realty project is as diverse and fluid as the project itself. For myself and other developers it is a constant struggle to find a balance between each individuals needs in the group and the overall needs of the community, when trying to implement feature request.

I was doing freelance contract work in regards to Open-Realty projects, soon after taking over the project. I realized quickly the great potential of the software, and wanted to find a way to work on Open-Realty on a “full time” basis. At the same time made a life altering decision to quit my full time Job as a Technician/Programmer with a local school district, move with not yet then fiance back to her home state, and start my own company. I started Transparent Technologies as a web hosting company, that specialized in Open-Realty web hosting. The goal was to have enough clients to pay for myself to work on Open-Realty. Since this time, I have adopted our goals, and now market commercial add-ons for Open-Realty as well as our hosting services. Our commercial add-ons at this time include add-ons for CSV Import, RETS Import, IDX (FTP) Import, a Google mapping& geocoding solution, and an advanced contact form. Most features we wish to add to Open-Realty make it into the open source application, while these small handful of specialized tools have become commercial products.

One thing we have always done, is try to target our products to other developers and web designers. Our initial intent was to stay very hands off when it came to dealing with end users. We felt this was a win-win solution. In dealing with other developers, our support costs are lower then if we had to support end users, and we are providing very cost efficient tools to developers allowing them to resell services using our tool at a fair price (Note: I will be posting a future blog about “Pricing for Realtors”).

So in short, my company as gone from doing contract work, to selling web hosting, now to offering commercial software. My personal goals have also changed in regards to the Open-Realty project, which was at first a simple listing management script, and I see it evolving into a full management solution for Realtors that can handle more then just simple listing data. It has been an interesting ride thus far and I see no end in the road.