im curious, how someone like CentOS makes their money. they take the red hat linux source code, add features, and rebrand it, and then give it away for free ? where is their revenue from ?
Most Open Source software companies don't make money. Most are non-profit organizations supported by companies, donations, and volunteers.
The main point of open source software is that they dont make money they live on donations of money from users/ datacenters and webhosts often donate old servers and inferstructure and websites/universities provide mirrors and i dont think they take rhl and add features and re-brand more like the other way round red hat use centOS for developing the lower class red hat linux and use fedora core for developing the enterprise editions as there built on the same code base thats why people tend to use centOS/fedora as its practically the same and free, i know i always pick the latest version of fedora core for my servers for this exact reason
Some open source companies offer a free version of their product, and then you can pay a fee to enable extra features (AgoraCart does this and they do extremely well). But as said above, it's usually from donations/sponsors/investors.
Contrary to what is said in this thread, open source does not say you can't make money. You could fully well have a GPL'd program for pay only distribution (you just need to package the source along with it). Most companies that are involved in open source don't sell the software, and if they do, they make the source available anyway (Red Hat). The majority of companies will sell support licenses as that's where the money really is. The initial sale of software is really nothing compared to the support costs. And CentOS IS RED HAT! They take all the trademarks out and package binary releases. Fedora is the "unstable" version of Red Hat. Red Hat distributions are ONLY by purchase. They don't use CentOS, CentOS takes their packages.
Just look at firefox. Sure the support and software are free, and you will never pay a dime for it but they make millions! How, that little google search bar. and as Aron said many companies sell support such as redhat and suse.
Many Open source source softwares receive donation and they also earn from support... Many coders who write these free softwares which are open source as well are full-time employed in some company and they do this in their free time.
True! The common practice is they offer an application or a software type of product. The package most often provides some add-ons and support of course, which you have to pay for if you want them.
They make the software based on their own interest not money. Such as firefox They depend on donation