The Open Source Initiative, which works to promote open-source software and ideals

What is open-source software?

Open-source software is software which is under a special type of license in which the source code, which is usually copyrighted, is instead open to all. Specifically, this refers to code which meets the Open Source Definition for code licensing or is released to the public domain, and thus available without any licensing terms.

Why is this good?

Since the source code of open source software is available to all, this allows anyone to modify and adapt software to their needs. It also promotes innovation and reduces the need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ which is present in most proprietary software solutions simply due to the licensing and copyright issues involved.

It is good for businesses, enterprises and consumers as well. A report by the Standish Group states that the adoption of open source software models worldwide  has resulted in general savings of approximately $60 billion USD annually to consumers.

How does open source make money?

Since the source code of open source software is available for anyone to modify, people often wonder how businesses that utilise open source ideals can make money, since any theoretically distributed software could be legally copied based on the terms of most open source licenses.

For these reasons, a lot of companies which produce open source software offer priced high-level or enterprise level support for their open-source software. This enables them to charge for a service which keeping the software product free, open and able to adapt and innovate along with other open source software. Another example is consumer services, of which is good example is Ubuntu One, a new consumer level service, which allows Ubuntu users to share and synchronise files, contacts and notes using built into the Ubuntu operating system. This service is seamless and the file synchronisation, although only a small part of Ubuntu One, acts in a very similar manner to Dropbox.