The concept of "ownership" is not clear when you're using a free license. The only thing that is clearly owned is the copyright, but a free license gives everyo

The concept of "ownership" is not clear when you're using a free license. The only thing that is clearly owned is the copyright, but a free license gives everyone all the freedom they could possibly want with the software other than put their own copyright on it, so it's almost like they "own" it too.[1] So yes, all free licenses allow you to do something like sell support for the software or charge money for improving it with your own private patches. If they didn't, companies like Red Hat or Collabora couldn't exist. Except for its copyright, everyone "owns" free software. [1] This is actually even better than when you buy software under a EULA. Most EULAs say something like "the software is licensed, not sold", explicitly reminding you that you're paying for the permission to use the software and that you don't own it.