Individual Donations:
We exist in order to align the needs and resources of corporate, government and other organizational software users with the benefits and needs of the open source development community. In our experience as corporate information executives, we have been consistently impressed with the quality, responsiveness, security, dedication and creativity of open source software and open source developers. Moreover, we know that we can actually see, modify and, in this sense, "own" the software we have "bought".
We have conversely been appalled at how much of our investment in traditional software went to fund the war chests of vendors as they fought to dominate markets completely foreign to our interests. We sincerely do not want to target any one company but, as we struggled with our own margins and profits, we were aghast to see one of our major software vendors reap $2.48B in profit on $2.89B in revenue for its desktop division, $1.88B in profit on $2.39B for its information worker division and then lose hundreds of millions of the dollars we paid them for software that we cannot see, touch or own in their attempt to conquer new markets. We are glad when our vendors can generate a profit and remain financially stable but a 700% mark up and the hemorrhage of hundreds of millions of dollars in unrelated ventures indicates that we may be paying too much for our software.
Once we became convinced of the great benefits of open source software and cooperative development, we recognized there were problems with the financial models of many open source software projects. The products provided generally higher core quality and technical security but frequently lacked the financial security and "fit and finish" necessary in the corporate environment.
A business model based upon selling "free" software seems inherently flawed! A business model that sells technical support for the communally developed "free" software is not much better. It is not well aligned with one of the more attractive advantages of open source software - high reliability and quality.
We need a different, more subtle yet powerful business model -- one where the consumers of the software recognize it as an enabling tool and not a product for sale. We need a model where consumers of software directly support the development of the software because it makes them more profitable and efficient and not because they are held hostage to its use, end-of-life status and licensing structure. This unexpected confluence of opportunity and need has spawned the Open Source Development Corporation business model.