I typically se a lot of apps or websites day they are open source. I have wondered what stops someone from using the code from creating a competitor to the original? Are there different levels to open source? By this I mean do they only allow a specific amount of code to be looked at and if so, how do they delegate who sees what?
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Every open source project has a license agreement associated with it. One big thing the license states is what someone is legally allowed to do with the software. Depending on the terms, someone could literally take and resell the software. Others are more restrictive and only allow non-commercial uses.
The [MIT License](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License) is one of the most permissive. It generally lets anyone do whatever they want with the open source software including building a derivative and selling it without paying the original writer.
The [GPL license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License) is more restrictive. It requires any derivative work to also be open sourced and puts some restrictions on how derived software can be sold.
> I have wondered what stops someone from using the code from creating a competitor to the original?
The license. Some licenses explicitly block it. If a company violates it, they will lose a lot in court. You as a consumer generally ignores the license agreement because 99.9% of the time it doesn’t matter. But for a company? They literally invest in an army of lawyers to make sure they don’t violate these terms because it’s easy to get found out and they can lose a lot if they willingly violate it.
> Are there different levels to open source?
Android is a perfect example. Google owns the project and Android itself is completely open source. Others can and have built derivatives of Android that directly compete with Google’s Android. Amazon with their Fire devices is an example. Google splits Android into 2 parts. The open source core which is derived from Linux. Then there are parts of Android that are Google proprietary that integrate with Google services. Things like the Play store and payment services are part of that. Companies that use those services need to pay Google a licensing fee. Amazon doesn’t pay Google a licensing fee because they developed their own replacement components with the same Android core. This is also what hamstrung Huawei phones when they were sanctioned by the US. They lost the ability to use Google services including the Google Play store and had to basically develop replacement services.
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