How is this supposed to work? The linux community for instance has thousands of developers around the globe. How can long-term continuity, quality and speed be archieved without such a base?

To solve that problem, the special community model plays an important role. Community members commit themselves to supporting the development process.

If software components are used for business purposes, e.g. for sales and administration of insurance policies, the development costs are shared between members. Testing and evaluation remain free.

The community defines the processes around the development activities. The community members specify requirements, set up release and test plans and documentation.

The community finally approves assignments to software development teams. A member may contribute to the required work by his own development team or by hiring a third-party developer.

The community is organized as a „non-profit company“.

That means, expenses for organisation and infrastructure need to be covered but no profit is meant to be gained. These expenses will be covered by a annual membership fee. The spending of these fees is reported to the community on a regular schedule.

Since no licence fee for the existing software releases is due, all software components are free. Only new developments have to be financed, either by the members themselves or by contracting an independent developer team of their choice.

So all effort in software development is only paid once and remains free of charge afterwards.

Because the software and its source code is freely available at all times, its quality can be be checked continuously. In contrast to standard software made and licenced by a single manufacturer, no proprietary parts are contained. Thus the community members are independent of software vendors.

Moreover, a true competion between software developing companies, service providers, training comanies, consultants etc. can be established in and open market, providing (in theory) best services at lowest pricest.

read on...