The Open Source as a new business opportunity

I’ve been describing in a forum an opportunity to design competitive open source information systems for airports and airlines, and someone replied that, being basically a nice idea, it has a ‘but’.

He confirms to me that the old business model supporters have real difficulties in facing the market with this new approach.

It seems strange, because there is a number of flourishing open source companies in the  world, making business, earning money, and offering interesting products and services.

And here is my ‘but’.
I strongly believe that the open source approach is the future for the software (and not only; the same for CC licenses, etc.).
It is just that the business model that is different from the traditional ones.
As an example, just check for ReddHat, MySQL, etc.

In the past all the companies focused their business on the large customers, those with money to spend.
But such customers are not many, and now also they have to face a different market, low cost airlines, the worldwide crisis, etc.

In addition, I always tried to develop innovative projects, for my satisfaction and my pockets,but not only that.
I think we can develop such things doing something good and useful for the markets that don’t have great opportunities.

I believe that money flies, and if you want to create business opportunities somewhere, you need an aircraft flying there.
Not many people likes to spend more than few hours of travel to make business.

The open approach creates opportunities.
Added value software modules and services are the revenue-making opportunity.

I have a long experience in designing innovative airport information systems around the wolrd, and I have a number of ideas that can be useful to the market, but that cannot easily be ‘digested’ by traditional and conservative business.