What is Open Source Software and how does it work?
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You’re going to get a lot of opinions on this, and I’d recommend that you also ask about the context from which those opinions come. I’ve been working in Free Software since the late 90’s, and I’ve both developed Free Software and used Free Software in operations in large scale environments.
Free Software is related to the concept that users who pay for software should have the same rights of ownership as users who buy any other material good. If I buy software, I should be able to study it to understand how it works (especially when it doesn’t), and modify it to fit my needs, because I paid for it. I should also be able to share the changes that I made with others. Proprietary software does not generally include the source code used to maintain it, so users have neither the right nor the ability to do those things.
Open Source software is a related concept that focuses on the collaborative aspects of Free Software, without discussing the ethical underpinnings of the Free Software movement.
Those differences carry over into the licenses used for software. Free Software advocates are likely to use a license from the GNU organization: GPL or LGPL. Those licenses emphasize the rights of users. Open Source advocates are likely to use a more permissive license, such as the BSD, MIT, or Apache 2.0 license. Those licenses place fewer restrictions on how the source can be used, including in non-free derived products.
As to the question of how it works, that depends on whether you’re asking a technical question or a business question.
Technically: Generally, users who receive software will also receive a copy of the source code. Often, the source code is available to the public on a shared service like GitHub or GitLab, or on the vendor’s own site. Users can send their changes back to the original author for consideration, or they can distribute their own copy if they’d prefer to take a different approach to development than the original author.
As a business: Users pay for proprietary software because the original author is the exclusive source for that software. Users might choose to pay for Free Software because its original author understands it best, and is best suited to provide ongoing support and development for their paying users. Many Free Software products are available at no charge, because their authors don’t believe that supporting that product would be interesting or profitable, but they do think that something that they created for their own needs might be helpful to others.
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