Money is being made with Open Source. Some make spectacular money by exploiting Open Source (Google, Apple) and some things wouldn't even exist without it (Internet, Software as a Service, Cloud Computing) - so it really boils down to finding the right business model.

BusinessWeek has a good one on making money and growing fast in the open source world, titled "Open Source: An Open Question for Red Hat and Others". The general theme is: Open Source companies have a tough time growing fast and making profits - with RedHat and Novell as examples - altough "Software supplier Red Hat is racking up growth figures that much of techdom might envy. Sales rose 32%, to $157 million, in the quarter ended May 31, and profits climbed a respectable 7%.".

What's wrong with that? The critique goes to the business models: As the new RedHat CEO (coming from Delta Airlines) puts it: "A pure service business is not particularly defensible," says Whitehurst. "Some open-source companies have not truly figured that out."

How true is that. But money is being made with Open Source. Some make spectacular money by exploiting Open Source (Google, Apple) and some things wouldn't even exist without it (Internet, Software as a Service, Cloud Computing) - so it really boils down to finding the right business model.

Open-Xchange decided 2 1/2 years ago to add the indirect Software-as-a-Service business model. Since then we have won the worlds largest hoster (1&1) and many other premier hosters as our partners, adding 8 million Open-Xchange users this year.

It took us 10 years to get there, so Marten is probably right: "Open source is not a get-rich-quick scheme," says Marten Mickos, the former CEO of MySQL and now a senior vice-president at Sun. "You have to have patience." He adds that the company was 13 years old when it sold.

But if you get it right you can be as relaxed as Marten these days.