Hey, not sure if this is the right forum, but I was just curious about open source software and operating systems (like Linux). How do programs that are open source make any money for their creator? Are they only produced with intent to better the computer-using portion of humanity? Or do their creators somehow make money. Also, out of curiosity, how does one edit open source software; With a text editor, or is it more complicated?

-Kyle

Hi...

OpenSouce software can be made by anyone: companies that wants free comercials, groups that want help people get somenthing of equal quality to "good" comercial software or individuals that are crazy enought to keep working allone :]... The best thing in it is that:

One thing is that you don't have to pay for it (So every "open source" is also "freeware", but not every "freeware" is "open source"), but there are donations - if you like product you are free to donate some money so creators of it would have something to eat... those sums are just "any" - exactly "any" you can even give them 1$ or less... just how much you can... there are also sponsors - they may want to put their baner at project site as "partners" and are helping in development... sometimes larg companies that must pay for software without alternative invest in opensource project so they won't need to pay for it in future... there are many ways...

Second thing is that everyone have access to souce code, so when some bug is spoted, it is fixed very fast (sometimes by user) and is sended beck to server so all people would be able to use better version - you don't have to wait year for fix - it is usualy few days... To "edit" it you have to edit source code of application - and this means: Know programing language in what it was made wery well and also study source for some time so you would know what-do-what... then you cand send fix or modification... If you register yourself as developer you probably would get access to server by CVS (stands for (Con-)current Version System) or SVN (stands for SubVersion System) ### if i'm wrong with it please correct me someone ### and you would be able to upload your fix straight to server... if not - you have to prapare patch (even diff is enought) and send it to developers explaining what it does... But usualy edit source code is not enought - you would need to test it a bit - so you must compile it and make robust tests so you know if that bug dissapeard and any new doesn't show up...

This is how it is... Open Source projects are growing faster than any others becouse of this and bug tracking is easier, so they are better and better day after day... Personaly I love that kind of projects and I'm contributing to few and right now I'm totally-any-payed-license-free-also-known-as-full-legal Hope that explained a bit of nature of Open Source... probably you would also love it...

That was a very good and thorough explanation of open source software.

With open-source software, the developers of the application make money by displaying advertisements on their web site and donations from users. In rare cases, the organization from which the software is developed may be funded by a for-profit organization. (e.g. Mozilla is funded by Google partially quite a bit)

As for editing open-source software, you must have knowledge of the programming language that the software was created in (e.g. PHP for things like phpBB and C/C++ for most desktop applications). You can probably use anything you would program with to edit open-source software. Generally this will be bug-fixes and feature implementations. Also, you may be able to write add-ons (extensions) for the software itself if it is open-source (e.g. Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, Notepad++, etc).

Hope this helps

No no no... those are not accurate representations of "Open Source" licensing.

Open Source does not mean shareware. Developers do not "make money by displaying advertisements" for anything or by asking for donations. That's spamware / nagware and it compromises the freedom offered by Open Source. Neither should Open Source be confused with "freeware", the main distinction being whether the end user has free access to the original uncompiled code.

Open Source models can be successful but they are not for everyone. Yes I have seen some very fast bug fixing for projects under OpenSource. On the other hand, I have also submitted bugs long ago where a certain (unpaid in this case) developer assigned to the task has simply never bothered to fix the item.

There is also a subtle difference between Open Source and GPL, although the two go hand in hand so well they are often talked about synonymously. To clarify...

Open Source: Basically means giving the end user free access to the code of a product, so that they are able (and allowed) to make changes to that product as they see fit.
GPL: Gnu Public License, is a well thought out legal-speak license used as a means of distributing Open Source (and similar) products. You can grab a copy of that license from http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

Essentially, when you market something under GPL, it is copyright to you. However, instead of a "copyright" law where you would object to anyone redistributing your work, making multiple copies, selling it for profit themselves or even giving it away to their friends... you are declaring "copyleft" which basically means that as the copyright owner, you give permission for the next person to copy your work, you give permission for them to onsell your product, or to give it away. The restrictions you specify are that...

• They must not impose any less freedom to whoever they pass your product to. If they sell it to a friend, that friend has every right to onsell to their friends or to give away copies as they see fit.
  
• The GPL license (or a link to it) should be included with the product to keep the copyleft well known and active. (Does not slip into restrictive commercial "copyright")
  
• In the case of computer programs, the uncompiled Source Code of the product should also be made accessible to the end user (essentially, "Open Source"). This means they are able to make alterations with all the power of the original programmer. Derivatives of Open Source are to remain likewise Open Source.
  

So you see, you can make money off Open Source by marketing (selling) the product. What you can't do is stop the next person from doing the same. Some projects make money from combining Open Source with NonOpen Source as a package. Red Hat Linux (now Fedora) has an enterprise version which is very costly. The core Linux is as Open as always but the whole package includes certain proprietary (non free) programs that must not be onsold. This is perfectly acceptable as there are different licenses for different parts of the whole package. The expensive cost also covers the year-long caller support which Fedora offers those who purchase their boxed product.

The Linux example:
When Linus Torvalds originally made Linux, he was studying with a cut down educational version of UNIX known as MINUX (mini-UNIX). He contacted the author of the Minux package and requested certain changes. The response he got back amounted to "No thanks, we like Minux the way it is. Minux will never have the changes you requested". Linus then decided the only way he could get what he wanted would be to make his own version. He'd have to do this from scratch (as peeking into someone else's code and ripping their product off is illegal) and so pulled in friends over the internet to help with the project. When he was done, Linus could have commercially marketed his new project. Instead, he decided that as he'd made it out of frustration of not being able to tweak the code of the Minux product, he would instead offer his own product under GPL, giving anyone like him full permission make changes... the opposite of how he had been denied. Linux (Linus's UNIX) has since been one of the most well known and successful examples of Open Source to date.

Okay... think I got that accurate (explaining what Open Source is, anyway). Kind of a long story. I got a fair whack of my perspective from documentaries like RevolutionOS which you can get at http://www.revolution-os.com

I have written long enough for now. If you like I can give you a very clear example in how giving my work away under Open Source concept has very quickly earned me thousands of dollars... and the company I was working under much more again. Just let me know if you want the story and I'll continue in this thread (including links to the Educational product in question, the forum I used to seek Open help maintaining it and everything)

Yes, I also want to add that most of the money comes from sponsors, as it was said, for working after work on their projects, people can donate money, but thats usually not to much, unless they get a big donation, a lot of programmers like to do what they are doing, but for example imagine a big organisation which has money, they give to someone a lot of money, I mean millions to invest into open source software not to only get it by free, but also to make other commercial products not as popular as they are..

Imagine I'm a company A and there is a company B which is making a lot of money and thats why my business on my company A isn't running superb, I invest into open source software or donate money, somebody with that money finds lots of programmers and they start their work, they are paid, the programmers, but the code is still open-source, the software gets a bit popular, it takes some share away from the company B and I, the company A am a bit happier with that There are in my opinion a lot of examples I could make..

As I know, why did Linux Ubuntu CDs get to you by mail for free, because they paid for it and they got the money from big sponsors, in that way a lot of people tried Linux and didn't install Windows, a little bit of them moved to Linux and Today when you say the word Linux, most of people knows what it means, not as it was 7 years ago..

Just another comment on open-source marketing--I have seen more and more companies make some or all of their packages available under some open license but where they can make money is in consulting or providing support services to that product, and/or they do something like what was mentioned--Fedora, and have open-source for one level and cost for the next.

The main two groups are user-written or help-funded. Canonical who make Ubuntu are entirely funded by paid support, and Shuttleworth (Thawte and Ubuntu founder). Help-funded is pretty much always one person (mIRC) or a large professional group. User-written sometimes go towards propriety, like OpenOffice into NeoOffice and possibly back.

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