What is Open Source Software and how does it work?
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It’s just an agreement by the makers to let anyone look at the source code and share it around.
If you write some code, and put the GPL license up at the top, anyone can use it, change it, and share it around (as long as they keep the GPL license at the top).
That has some consequences. It means it’s really hard to charge anyone for the software, because they can just go get it anywhere and built the program themselves. It means anyone can go grab freely available software to go do a whole bunch of stuff. It means bugs are found faster because there are more people using the software and specifically looking at the code to learn why it’s broken.
There’s a bunch of different sort of agreements, called licenses. Some behave in different ways.
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