I read a really interesting history of the “freemium” model by Chris Anderson this weekend. I think he is becoming the go to guy on this subject, and has a book coming out about the economy of free.

I won’t go into too much detail, because Chris does a great job of it.  But Chris Anderson thinks that some sort of freemium model will penetrate every aspect of the economy. It makes sense to me.

SugarCRM has leveraged the philosophy of “free” to great success. Our community is ever-expanding, and Community Edition has hundreds of thousands of users.

We have come a long way from throwaway razor blades, but the model seems to be making more and more sense to more and more business segments.