1. Explain, in your own words, the difference between “free” and “open source”.

Question

1. Explain, in your own words, the difference between “free” and “open source”. Is one superior to the other?

2. Find an example of a commercial entity making money by using Linux. Be creative in your examples. How does this company monetize on the freely available Linux operating system?

3. If you were to develop a software such as a new office productivity suite, how would you license it? Which license would you choose and why?

4. Choose a license that is open source, but not discussed in detail in the textbook. Describe the license and specifically mention how it is different from GPL. Provide an example of a work licensed under it.

with refrences please

Explanation / Answer

1. Free softwares are distributed to the general public, to provide them with software serivces without any cost. Free softwares mostly don't charge anything to its users but can charge some amount to its users for premium functionalities.Free softwares don't provide source code of the software and don't allow users to modify and redistibute the software by any means. Software development of open source software is limited to the people who developed it. Its documentation is limited and doesn't have much of customisation options.
On the other hand open source software concept was developed by keeping social aspect in mind. Open source softwares give the users, freedom of modifying the code and redistributing the software. The open source softwares could evolve fast and add additional functionalities due to multiple people working on it. Typically getting help on open source softwares is much easier due to a lot of documention by the people who contribute into its development. The open source softwares can be easily customised according to the users needs.
Ref:https://askubuntu.com/questions/78958/is-there-a-difference-between-free-software-and-open-source-software
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html

2. One of the companies which makes money out of Linux is Redhat. Its one of the biggest open source players in the world. It monetises its open source variants by developing customised hybrid solution which companies can use for its operations. It has developed multiple open source components like OpenShift, Ansible, Jboss, OpenStack, Gluster etc which have helped Redshift made billions of dollars in Revenue.
The two main sources of Redshift revenue are:

3 As a new software I would put it under MIT License. Its the most used license in the world and gives the freedom to distribute the software everywhere. It is an open source license and will allows me to charge for the variants. I can give free variants of my softwares in universities. This will help in making it poular and will add necessary manpower who are familiar with the software. I will also sell the paid variants of the softwares to businesses.
Ref:https://opensource.org/licenses/category
https://fossbytes.com/open-sources-license-type/

4.As I am unaware about your textbook, I won't answer this.

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