As we are all aware there is no such thing as a free lunch and open source software is not the same as "free" software. . In order to repay the necessary capital from stakeholders and to deliver and maintain the development program, OpenVPMS needs to generate adequate funds from its activities.

There are a number of business models in the open source area that we looked at. Many open source companies rely on income from consulting fees for providing specific services such as training, support and deployment.

We decided that developers and other companies that will build up around the OpenVPMS products are best to deliver these services. This fosters choice and competition to the industries benefit.

In the end we decided that the simplest and fairest way of achieving our business aims was to have Veterinary Practices pay a regular yearly subscription to OpenVPMS so they can run the software in their practice. See up to date Subscription rates