How do middle-sized open source projects survive?

2 pointsreputet4y ago1 comments

I get that majority of small open source projects are led by volunteers who consider it a hobby.

At the same time, some big projects can earn money by offering enterprise support [1], selling courses/certification [2] or by charging for repository packages. [3]

However, how do medium-sized players like Wireshark, GIMP or LibreOffice survive? I'm not sure that donations make a huge difference and it doesn't seem they have some support plans.

[1] Ubuntu: https://ubuntu.com/support

[2] RedHat: https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training-and-certification

[3] Conda package manager is free of charge but for using the Anaconda repository, enterprise users have to subscribe to a paid edition: https://www.anaconda.com/blog/anaconda-commercial-edition-faq

1 comments

detaro4y ago

LibreOffice has sponsorship from companies that sell support etc around it and employ devs. Wireshark is afaik sponsored by companies too, both users and companies that sell trainings.

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