Ads for open source projects on Google? 1

Posted by Colin A. Bartlett Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:19:00 GMT

I was shocked the other day to see sponsored Ad Words ads on Google under the keyword “email ruby” that seemed to be advertising a project on RubyForge:

I wonder if someone at the RubyMail project is paying to place these ads on Google? If so, I wonder why? Or perhaps Google gives these out for free some how? Do other open source projects have ads on Google?

Since the RubyMail project has one developer and one file last posted in April 2004, it seems odd that anyone would be paying for ads for such an inactive project.

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    JJ about 7 hours later:

    Well, you know, open source is big business nowadays, and that's exactly the business model behind it: Get customers for your (or even someone else's!) "free" source code, and at some point they will need services like support, modifications for it, and many people are willing to pay for it. Best thing is: the more there are bugs, the more you will get money...

    And some people just don't compare products or do research before they choose the software (like Ruby mail library) to use. They just pick the one they see first. You can sell _anything_ in the world, if you advertise it right.

    (Sorry my poor english.)

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