What are the most profitable ways for a programmer to make money from open source code?

As a programmer, I am impressed by the quantity and quality of open source software products. A couple of the best ones I've personally used are: jEdit and FreeMind. I support the open source concept, but am concerned that it negatively impacts programmers' income potential. Becoming an open source consultant would probably be the best way of making a living from writing open source code. How else can a programmer make a living from open source code?

What are the most profitable ways for a programmer to make money from open source code?
The canonical way to earn money from open source is to offer customization and support. You provide the software as-is for free, and offer value-added materials like manuals, training, and custom modifications for a price. The theory is that once written, the code has no marginal cost, but the other products and services do.





The most common open-source license is GNU, and you can legally repackage and resell any code released under the GNU license provided you make the full source code available and release it under the same license -- which means that you have no recourse if someone else takes your distribution, repackages it, and redistributes it at a slightly lower price. Really, the place to make money is in customization and other consulting work, not from the software itself.
Reply:Another way is to let people download the program for a trial period and then when the trial is over give them a choice to either buy or to uninstall the application.
Reply:edit the programs, burn them to a cd, and sell them.


Try to sell over the internet - that would be a good place to start.


Or maybe on eBay.


It's all up to you.