Many think that open-source companies don't make any money. Here are some examples of highly profitable open-source projects: 👇

🎩 Red Hat: The OG of open-source profit. Built an empire on Linux and got scooped up by IBM for $34 billion in 2019. Not too shabby for "free" software!

🍃 MongoDB: This NoSQL database is no joke in the profit department. Went public in 2017 and hit $1 billion in revenue in 2023!

🔍 Elastic: The brains behind Elasticsearch. Went public in 2018 and is raking in hundreds of millions annually.

🦊 GitLab: DevOps darling that went public in 2021. Worth billions now. Turns out, developers love paying for tools that make their lives easier!

🌊 Confluent: Riding the Apache Kafka wave to the bank. IPO'd in 2021 at an $11+ billion valuation.

⚡ Databricks: The spark in Apache Spark. Still private but valued at $30+ billion.

🔒 HashiCorp: Securing the bag with open-source infrastructure tools. Went public in 2021 at $10+ billion valuation. Security sells!

🐘 Cloudera: Hadoop's golden child. Taken private in 2021 for $5.3 billion.

The lesson? Open source can be insanely profitable when done right. It's not just about free software, it's about building communities, solving real problems, and offering value-added services.