[tocs]

A company providing a service might turn to open source a software project if they do not want to turn into a software company. If I understand correctly MySQL AB was a company that developed an open source DB but made money selling support and training (and also sold a non open version of MySQL). The company later sold for $1 billion, so there must have been some benefit.

[curiousjorge]

Interesting, is it fair to say that for enterprise customers, the bulk of the cost comes in the form of support & training?

I've seen a CRM company that sold their software for 100k/year but the actual software license is only like 20% or less and the remaining 80% was training and support.

So in this case letting go the license fee in return for marketing to adopters who now will turn to you for help.