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Business model

The proposed business model around Open CASCADE is based on the following sources of income:

As the reader many notice, this is a mixed business model, where the investment in free software development and maintenance is recovered in part by selling proprietary software based on it or complementing it.

Within the Open CASCADE development plans, third parties have an outstanding importance as partners. Each partner can play different roles, simultaneously or separately, that have to be defined among the following possibilities:

All of those partners should help to improve the collection of products and services around Open CASCADE, making it more interesting to potential customers.

Of course, not only advantages were perceived. Some risks where also identified due to the decision to go open source. Some (if not all) of them are common to almost any free software project:

In the following years it will be seen whether the Matra Datavision decision of making CASCADE an open source product was a right one, and whether it fulfills its expectations.


next up previous contents
Next: ACT and ACT Europe Up: Matra Datavision: towards an Previous: Benefits for customers and   Contents
Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona
2000-04-24