So who said there wasn't any money in open source? Cnet reports that Checkpoint has acquired Sourcefire to the tune of 225 million dollars. I blogged about Sourcefire in the entry "Open Source in a Box get $11m Funding".

In essence what Sourcefire has done is develop a leading open source intrusion detection software called snort. Parlaying its popularity by packaging it up in a box (see: "An alternative way of packaging"). There you have it folks, a tried and tested blueprint on how to make gobs of money out of open source.

Now it's not unusually to see the buyers dead-pan the original strategy. Red Herring reports this:

“Very few companies make it through our screening process, and Sourcefire made it through this filter,” said Gil Shwed, chairman of Check Point. “The Sourcefire team was able to translate Snort from just an open-source technology and turn it into one of the fastest-growing businesses.”

One would not like to give the impression (especially for a publicly traded company) that $225 million was spent on something that appears to be free. However we all know is that it's intellectual property (ip) is what gives value in the technology business and when you really get down to it, ip is always stored in somewhere else. Its entirety can rarely be found in documents or even code (here's a hint). Which incidentally, should be added to "101 Ways to Make Money off Open Source"