I always thought it was to cut down on legal costs and risk exposure. For example, if you are building something where you could potentially expose other entities to huge material risk and you open source it, if there is a problem then you can't be blamed for it and sued. What do you think about it?
The code itself isn't always the direct source of profit, it's often just a facilitator of the profit, this is usually the case for social media websites, but not something like a software solution or a video game.
1. You can make the App still require a license to use it (sure people can just turn this off / build it themselves, but this won't be the majority) 2. in apps like ente photo backup, you still need additional services to make the App useful (cloud storage) and they make money with that 3. donations I am sure there are many more ways :)
A lot of the software that companies open their source code are usually developer toolkits and libraries, not the products that have a non-technical userbase use. So they still keep their moneymakers closed-source. An exception to this is social media apps and websites, which make money by advertisement, therefore opening the source code does not hinder their profitability.
I always thought it was to cut down on legal costs and risk exposure. For example, if you are building something where you could potentially expose other entities to huge material risk and you open source it, if there is a problem then you can't be blamed for it and sued. What do you think about it?
I don't think you can't be blamed and sued for your app just because you open sourced it...
@@sainteckes That's my point. I am asking the opposite.
But then how is the money made
The code itself isn't always the direct source of profit, it's often just a facilitator of the profit, this is usually the case for social media websites, but not something like a software solution or a video game.
1. You can make the App still require a license to use it (sure people can just turn this off / build it themselves, but this won't be the majority)
2. in apps like ente photo backup, you still need additional services to make the App useful (cloud storage) and they make money with that
3. donations
I am sure there are many more ways :)
A lot of the software that companies open their source code are usually developer toolkits and libraries, not the products that have a non-technical userbase use. So they still keep their moneymakers closed-source.
An exception to this is social media apps and websites, which make money by advertisement, therefore opening the source code does not hinder their profitability.