this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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Ya'll in this comment section are making things more confusing somehow.
Free Open Source Software:
Is Free; available without purchase
Is Open Source; the source code is available to study and fork
Is Software; A series of intangible instructions that run through a compute module
Do correct me if I'm wrong, because I've just ripped these from other comments in this thread that have been disputed unclearly.
Not financially free but free as in freedom. Although most foss is free, there are foss programs you have to buy but after you bought it you are free to do woth it what you want (although that depends on licences and what falls under copyright).
Graphics font and name fall under trademark I believe, which separates it from copyright.
Firefox is a famous example of this. The code for Firefox is completely open to anyone to fork and reuse, but you cannot call your fork Firefox. Mozilla retains the brand and the logo for it.
Yes sorry I meant trademark. It is just visual such as graphics in games that are copyrighted. That is why you still need to buy Doom eventhough the code was open sourced in the 90's.
Any examples? I'm just curious how they stay afloat after sharing the source code once someone buys it, forks it and releases the source.
Maybe 'F' in FOSS does not mean it is gratis (de jure), but it is in fact gratis (de facto) for the majority of FOSS?
RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) would be an example. I am sure there are more but I am not well versed enough. There is also Ardour but I think that is more if you want a binary and build the software from source.
but everyone just used centos instead. was that a failure of the commercial foss idea?
Maybe, than again Red Hat was bought for an astronomical some by IBM so they were doing something right. Ubuntu still looks like it is doing well. I do not know how Suse is doing but they still exist.
So I think commercial foss is not a failure but probably difficult to maintain.
I'd say that 99.somethiny percent of open source software is also free as in beer
Come to think of it, I can't remember ever having seen open source software that required payment
ThFair enough most are free as in free beer and free as in freedom. But that is also the reason why open source is so badly funded. I donate but that is nowhere near enough. I am not Valve, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.. Do not have the funds to hire devs.
Wrong definition of βfree,β and funnily enough this is where the ensuing comments section confusion starts.