Can some one explain me the diffrence between free software and open source???

[srikar]

I understand the difference between free software and open source , but i want to know the clear differences.

See open source just tells how to make money out of free software( if i am wrong plzz comment).

See for example i set up an open source company and sell my products.Imagine my company succeeded a lot and it gained a lot of profits. See as the souce code is open , some organisation copy my entire source code and modify it a little bit.And if the cost of that software(which they sell) is less than what i had made , generally people will opt that software,. so its a huge loss to my company.

I have a doubt: - ,, as the other fellow had copied my entire software source code and started gaining huge money , does he have to pay me as he is using my code(modified form)?? How will my company sustain??

[Snowhog]

Re: Can some one explain me the diffrence between free software and open source

Everything you want/need to know about Free Open Source Software: The Free Software Foundation

[marshallbanana]

Re: Can some one explain me the diffrence between free software and open source?

While people can copy your source code you can copyright certain trademarks (eg. while other companies could distribute an OS functionally identical to Ubuntu, only Canonical can call theirs Ubuntu and use the associated logo). So basically companies rely on branding and reputation to encourage sales. How they make money in most cases is by providing support (I think I saw something recently saying something around 10% of Apache installs go on to purchase support from them). On the other side of the coin open source companies have lower development costs as much of the code comes from other sources. They generally operate on fairly low revenues (given the size of their user base) compared to some other companies but they can still make plenty provided they can get the numbers high enough.

By being open source your profit per user is somewhat limited (as if you charge an unreasonable amount someone can offer much the same for less), but as long as you charge a reasonable price your profit is limited only by the number of users you can get.

Sometimes it does seems hard to believe that everyone isn't just being undercut on price by everyone else. But you just have to look at Red Hat to see that the model does work.

Probably nobody could get Microsoft/Google rich with open source. But on the other hand its very difficult for Microsoft/Google to compete in terms of cost.

[cantab]

Re: Can some one explain me the diffrence between free software and open source

Free Software: Software should be Free because that is morally right.

Open Source: Software should be Open because that results in better software.