Can someone explain "Open Source Software" please?

komodosp

Hi all,

I've an interview for a company that produces open-source software so I've been reading up on it...

Now it's said that while open-source is "Free", it's free in the sense of "free speech" as opposed to "free beer" (this is what they say!)

Anyway, my question is, how can a company make profit from open source software? I would have thought by its very definition it's free because as soon as you release the source code, anyone can make any changes they want to it, incl. all protections, etc. Who pays who for the software? And if loads of developers worked on it (not just the original company who created it), then do they all have to paid for their contributions, or are they just doing it to help the original producers?

Thanks!

AlmightyCushion

Generally the companies charge for support. So you get the software for free but if it screws up then you're on your own unless you pay for the support.

SeanW

+1

dulpit

What he (^) said.

Example:

Novell have Open Suse (a Linux distro) which is totally free to download and use. However, if you want support from Novell you need to get Suse Linux Enterprise, which'll cost ya...

irlrobins

Another example would be the firefox web browser. The software is open source and free but the Mozilla Foundation got $50 million plus in revenue in 2005, mostly from search engine royalties (i.e. their paid referral agreement with Google)

FruitLover

Apart from the common free-software-pay-support model described above, fully commercial OSS works on the honour system, often with a free cut-down version of the main software package available. Not understanding how a company that sells OSS could make money (i.e. because people could easily get around any protection mechanisms etc) is quite common, but really, you may as well ask how Microsoft could possibly make money out of their software, as it's so easy to find pirate copies. There will always be people who will pay for software they like (especially businesses, who don't want to be liable for unlicensed software).

As far as I understand it, the idea behind common OSS licenses (e.g. the GPL) is that while you can use someone else's OSS code (even in a commercial product), by accepting the license for this code, you agree to open-source your larger software package which incorporates this borrowed code. The original authors of pieces of OSS code used in a larger application only get paid for their work if that's stipulated in their license. If not, then the code is fair game. Either way, the original code plus license and author info generally has to be made available along with the code for the whole new application.

Bear in mind the inherent ambiguity in describing software as 'free'. Most people think 'free' software means you don't have to pay for it (beer). That's often true, but 'free' can also mean 'do what you want with it' (speech), but you still have to pay for the license.

the_syco

FruitLover wrote: »

Not understanding how a company that sells OSS could make money

The book that comes with it is worth the €75 ala some random Linux distro.

komodosp

Ok, thanks all!

FruitLover

the_syco wrote: »

The book that comes with it is worth the €75 ala some random Linux distro.

No, I'm talking about actual commercial OSS, as opposed to the popular 'free software but expensive support' model used by many Linux distributors.

For example: the company I work for used to use a CRM suite called 'SugarCRM'. It's all written in PHP, unobfuscated (like that stops anyone anyway) and therefore fully open-source, but the full version requires a paid license to be used legally.

To entice people, and make piracy less attractive, they make a cut-down version available for free.