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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Nope, there are no protections. Open-source code really is free for anyone to look at, and for the most part it’s free to copy and reuse as long as you follow the license terms.
Why would someone open-source code that they wrote?
* Sometimes just to be generous
* Sometimes because they made it just for fun
* Sometimes because they’re going to make more money selling services than selling the software directly. People pay them (1) for using a hosted version of the software, or (2) to customize / modify the software, at an hourly rate
* Sometimes because it’s more important for everyone to have the software, than to make money from it. Google open-sourced Chromium because they wanted everyone to have a better browser, because they make money from people using the web. Better to have a bunch of Chromium-based browsers competing than to have everyone using Internet Explorer.
* Sometimes because the company needs the software, but doesn’t make money from it at all! Some projects like Kafka or Cassandra, are basically “tools” used by companies to run their business. They get more benefit from others helping to build that software than from hoarding it.
* Sometimes they didn’t want to open-source the code, but the fastest way to build something was to use existing open-source code and modify it, and now they’re required by the license to open-source their own improvements.
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