Open source products provide users with applications that rival commercial products yet have no cost attached to downloading them.

Over 2.7 million developers have generated more than 260,000 software programs designed to do everything from creating a document to managing a company. Just how do these developers produce this much free content? Keep reading!

A Matter of Principal

The open source community has three core beliefs.

  • Open source products should be free, as in no strings attached.
  • Open source products should provide users with the source code.
  • Open source products should allow users to modify and distribute the source code without paying royalties or fees to the developers.

Why Open Source

Maintaining an open source program is not free. Developers have to pay for server space, a domain, and other expenses involved in maintaining a popular program. Why then would they give away their product?

Each developer might have a different answer to that question. Some are paying it forward because they used open source code in their own creations. Others have struggled against commercial manufacturers and view open source as a way to take a stand against manufacturer gridlock.

Project Origins

Many open source programs, such as Pidgin, began as school projects for students pursuing degrees related to some type of technology or computer development. As such, the developers spend much of the time creating the project doing homework for class. Other projects, like PHP and Calibre, began because developers wanted to implement a solution for a problem they faced.

Production

When developers give away the source code to a product, it inspires creativity. Other developers will take the code and hack it, or modify it, to expand the original parameters. These volunteers then add their modifications to the open source project. Other people who have benefited by using the free program often contribute by helping to fix and correct any bugs that occur.

There are many things, like virtualization technology, that may not be as easy to make free. So this is another thing to consider in why some things are open source, and some things aren’t.

Development Time

Creating and maintaining a program takes time. While the initial code may come together quickly, it can take years to expand the parameters and gain traction. What a consumer downloads today may seem like a hefty package, but developers may have pieced the code together until it grew to the latest version’s feature-rich package.

Building From One Another

Open source code encourages developers to modify something already in existence rather than starting from scratch. Consider libpurple, a developer’s library for chat clients. Almost every open source chat protocol available today has some piece of libpurple in the code.

Donations

Donations help keep open source programs going. Consider the person who uses an open source PDF creator instead of a commercial one. The person could potentially save hundreds of dollars. Donating $50 helps the individual show his appreciation. It can also pay for the product’s domain registration for a year, depending on the host the developer uses.

Open source programs rely on several factors to support free distribution. All the aforementioned things, such as volunteers and donations, contribute to the ever-growing open source community. These things, working together, are the essential elements that allow developers to give away free products.

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