How to establish a 'business relationship' with the free software community

If you're coming from a traditional business perspective, the Linux and Free
Software development community might still seem quite a bit strange. 

However, it is the authors' belief that it is very important for vendors of
linux-based products and solutions to establish a healthy relationship with the
free software community.

Both parties can greatly benefit from such a relationship:  The businesses can
reduce their maintainance cost by submitting their changes back into the free
software project.  They also profit from new features developed within the
community.

The community benefits by increased number of users, more supported hardware
and feedback about the real needs of the users.

The author is a respected member of the Free Software development community,
and at the same time working as technical consultant to a number of
corporations working on Linux-Kernel related development.  From his past
experience, very few businesses have managed to establish this 'healthy'
relationship, simply because they didn't understand how free software
developmen works, and how they fit into that development model.

This presentation tries to explain the Free Software development model and give
guidelines how businesses should interact with Free Software projects.