Carlo Daffara taxonomy (FLOSSMETRICS) of business model and examples

1.     Dual licensing, e.g. MySQL, Mozilla software, Sleepycatdb, Pentaho
2.     Open Core, e.g. Zimbra, SugarCRM, Eucalyptus, SendMail
3.     Product specialists, e.g. Alfresco
4.     Platform Providers, e.g. RedHat, OpenStack
5.     Selection/consulting companies, e.g. Navica, Open WebApps
6.     Aggregate support providers, e.g. OpenLogic
7.     Legal certification and insurance, e.g. Palamida
8.     Training and documentation, e.g. Gbdirect
9.     R&D cost sharing, e.g. Eclipse, Webkit, OpenStack, Maemo (Nokia)
10.     Indirect revenues, e.g. Firefox, Android, Perl (O'Reilly)

Dual licensing

• Economic advantage for the vendor
• Dissemination for the product with reduced costs
• Creation of external ecosystem of add-ons (outside the source)
• Visibility
• Self-segmentation of the market

• Economic advantage for the adopter
• The adopter may opt for the open source edition if it is deemed sufficient; for the proprietary part, reduction in cost may give better price/quality ratio
• Potential disadvantages of the model
• Low external participation (limited code contributions)

Open Core

• Economic advantage for the vendor
• Reduction of R&D
• Reduced maintenance costs
• Visibility
• Increased dissemination
• External ecosystem of add-ons
• Self-segmentation of the market for the proprietary add-ons    
• Economic advantage for the adopter
• The adopter may opt for the open source edition if it is deemed sufficient; for the proprietary part, reduction in cost may give better price/quality ratio
• Potential disadvantages of the model
• Difficult to estimate the right balance between open and closed parts
• External groups may create substitutes for the proprietary parts    

Product specialists

• Economic advantage for the vendor
• Reduction of R&D
• Reduced maintenance costs
• Visibility
• Increased dissemination
• External ecosystem of add-ons    
  
• Economic advantage for the adopter
• Reduction in cost may give better price/quality ratio for the adopted software
• Stability
• Integrated support reduces external costs
• Potential disadvantages of the model
• Low barrier of entry for third-parties

Platform Providers

• Economic advantage for the vendor 
• Reduction of R&D
• Reduced maintenance costs
• Visibility, increased dissemination
• External ecosystem of software and additions
• Economic advantage for the adopter
• Reduction in cost may give better price/quality ratio for the adopted software
• Stability
• Integrated support reduces external costs
• Legal protection is included
• Easy to find trained personnel
• Availability of long-term options    
• Potential disadvantages of the model
• Platform engineering requires large R&D efforts even with shared resources

Selection/consulting companies

• Economic advantage for the vendor 
• Cost of software certification and selection can be partially shared across customers, as most adopters have a large share of common needs    
  
• Economic advantage for the adopter
• Reduced selection costs
• Reduced risk of wrong choice
• Potential disadvantages of the model
• Limited market
• Difficulty in following rapid evolution of the products covered (evaluation costs)
  

Aggregate support providers

• Economic advantage for the vendor 
• Cost of support can be partially shared across customers
• Economies of scale
  
• Economic advantage for the adopter
• A single point of control and cost for a large number of project
• Reduced negotiation efforts for large number of individual vendors
• Simplified management and governance
• Potential disadvantages of the model
• Limited market
• May be perceived as in partial competition with existing specialists

Legal certification and insurance

• Economic advantage for the vendor
• Cost of legal certification and secondary-level insurance can be shared across the most used OSS projects
• Economic advantage for the adopter
• Equivalent to insurance
• Provides a materialized and stable costs against uncertain, difficult to quantify negative events
• Potential disadvantages of the model
• Limited market
• Difficult to estimate risk probabilities
• Need to cover separate legal frameworks across the world with different rules

Training and documentation

• Economic advantage for the vendor 
• A significant portion of training development costs can be shared across customers
• Economies of scale
• Reuse of community-developed material
  
• Economic advantage for the adopter
• Lower cost for training compared to self-managed training (from source code, publicly available documentation)    
• Potential disadvantages of the model
• May be perceived as in partial competition with existing specialists
• Human intensive
• Most of it cannot be replicated at low cost
   

R&D cost sharing

• Economic advantage for the vendor 
• Reduction of R&D
• Reduced maintenance costs
  
• Economic advantage for the adopter
• Same as vendor- in this case, vendor and adopter coincide
• Potential disadvantages of the model
• Estabilishing the management and contribution structures may be complex and costly, requires constant effort

Indirect revenues

• Economic advantage for the vendor 
• Source availability reduces engineering costs
• Increase visibility on multiple platforms
  
• Economic advantage for the adopter
• Adopters obtains a quality product at no cost
• Potential large ecosystem for extensions    
• Potential disadvantages of the model
• Requires a large external market for incentives
• May be dependent on a single (or small number) of actors increasing risk

[1] http://docencia.etsit.urjc.es/moodle/pluginfile.php/13408/mod_resource/content/1/03-business-models.pdf
[2] OSS Business models table