It has been frequently debated whether businesses can succeed using a strictly Free/Open Source business model, and what kinds of businesses can succeed using only Free/Open Source Software. Matt Hartley recently wrote, in his article Top Five Open Source Business Models You Never Heard Of, that "The art of “selling” or generating revenue from open source is a topic of growing importance as open source takes a larger piece of the software business." Indeed, perhaps the most frequently-asked question is, how do you make money from Free Software?

Whether or not Blue GNU can successfully get off the ground depends in large part on whether we can convince people to subscribe to our service and whether we can build the kind of community that I helped build in my previous post. I am fairly confident I can build a community, but I have never had to try to establish one. Still, I believe I can do that. The bigger trick will be to convince people to submit articles to Blue GNU. Even more challenging is to convince people to subscribe to the premium services. Based on my previous research, I'm convinced people will subscribe to the premium services I'm offering. The problem is, some people automatically turn off as soon as they hear or see the word money. Still, I believe I can build this up, slowly but surely. Throw in a few advertisers and I believe Blue GNU will be in decent shape.