"No, you misunderstand completely. There is free software and there is open source. Open source does not compete with paid/proprietary based on price." Open of

"No, you misunderstand completely. There is free software and there is open source. Open source does not compete with paid/proprietary based on price." Open office is a good example. Everybody I know uses it as a free alternative for Microsoft Office. How is this not competing on price? From a developer standpoint, it's great to be able to tinker, check for spyware, etc. But 99% of users will never actually care or look at the source and only even care about it because it's a free version of a proprietary counterpart. "You can sell open source for thousands of dollars. Redhat does it every day" You can. But you have no competitive advantage because you are required under the GNU to release your source to everyone (and any other company can sell it for X amount less). Companies need to either sell support or something else to stay relevant (redhat sells support, certifications, and books). This is one of the reasons SaaS have become so popular over the last couple of years. You don't need to release your source and could base your entire business on open source software without having to release anything back and lose your competitive advantage.