[xenomachina]

You can try to sell open source software. The problem is you can easily be undercut, because anyone else can sell it too, or even give it away. As the original developer, you're actually somewhat at a disadvantage, as you have to pay for the expenses of development, while your competitors do not.

It's pretty rare for anyone to make money directly from selling their open source software. Most open source business models involve selling something else, like support or hardware.

[s3cur3]

The elephant in the room here is the WordPress add-on market. There are thousands of devs doing a thriving business selling themes & plugins, all of which have to be GPL licensed, with basically no trouble. If you want a model for successful open source commercial development, that’s it.

[pjmlp]

How many of them are able to actually do stuff like paying a mortgage from selling plugins?