Eazel 폐업, 오픈소스회사의 수익모델은?

X-window에서 돌아가는 Nautilus라는 프로그램으로 유명한 Eazel이 문을 닫았습니다. 들리는 소문에 의하면 자금사정이 문제가 되었다고 하는데요...

리눅스를 비롯한 오픈소스 회사(달리 부를 명칭이 없네요)들에게 매우 큰 비보가 아닐까 합니다. Eazel 문제가 다른 리눅스 기업들에게 악영향을 미치지나 않을까 걱정됩니다. 오픈 소스기업들을 살릴 수 있는 수익모델로는 무엇이 있을까요? 프로그램 자체가 아닌 서비스에 대한 비용지불이 거의 유일한 모델로 알고 있는데요...

서양에서야 서비스에 대해 돈을 지불하는 것이 일반화 되어 있지만 동양, 특히 한국에서는 서비스는 그야말로 서비스로만 인식이 되어있는데요... 오픈소스 관련 사업을 하는 기업들에게 새로운 수익모델이 필요하지 않을까요? 현재 우리나라 리눅스 기업들은 어떤식으로 수익을 창출하는지도 궁금하군요.
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관리자 코멘트: Eazel은 gnome 개발자 커뮤니티와 밀접한 관계를 가지고 함께 발전해온 것 같습니다. Eazel의 폐업을 공식적으로 알려온 다음 메일을 읽어 보십시오. 전체 내용은 아래 "관련 링크"를 참조하시기 바랍니다. Eazel은 비록 없어지더라도 GPL로서 개발된 Nautilus는 계속 남아 Eazel이 못다이룬 꿈을 이루어 주기 바라는 마음입니다....

From: Bart Decrem
To: gnome-hackers gnome org
Subject: Eazel
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 16:33:34 -0700

Hi everyone,

For the last few days, there have been rumors floating around that Eazel is going out of business.

I regret to inform you that Eazel is in fact shutting down. Over the past six months, our board members and executives worked tirelessly to secure financing for the company. Unfortunately, the high tech capital markets have all but dried up and we have been unable to secure funding.

In the midst of these difficult times, our hackers have managed to hit two major milestones for Nautilus: our 1.0 and 1.0.3 releases. We would like to express our gratitude to the Eazel hackers for keeping their eye on the ball over the past 2 months. Thanks also to all of our friends who've been so supportive these last few months, in particular the more than 100 members of the GNOME community who are hacking on Nautilus and the folks who sent us money via Paypal (we sent you tshirts and thank-you cards).

Here's what to expect over the coming days and weeks: over the next day or so, the Eazel web site will be shut down, Eazel's online services will be discontinued, and the Nautilus bootstrap installer will no longer be able to fetch files from our software catalog. We'll make sure that the users of our online storage are able to retrieve their files, and we are sending out mail to all our registered users. Andy Hertzfeld has generously offered to host what will remain of the Eazel web site and all the Nautilus resources will continue to be available. The source code, CVS repository and binaries have always been hosted on gnome.org, and this will continue. Our Bugzilla repository, the Nautilus mailing lists and other Nautilus resources (such as the RSS feed etc.) will be hosted by Andy. E-mail to former employees' eazel.com address will be forwarded at least for the next few weeks, and resumes for some of our former employees will be posted on the remaining web site. The company's assets will be sold to pay off our creditors, so it's conceivable that the Eazel trademark or domain name will be purchased by a company that has no relationship to the current Eazel.

Nautilus is licensed under the GPL, so the software will live on and, we hope, continue to improve....