Technology
Open Source Software: Licenses, Economics, and Why It Powers the Internet
Open source software underpins the global internet, powering 96% of Fortune 500 companies' web servers, the entire Linux ecosystem, and billions of devices from Android phones to cloud infrastructure. Yet 'open source' means something precise: source code publicly available under a legal license that permits modification, redistribution, and private use, with no single vendor lock-in. This article examines the three dominant license models (GPL, MIT, Apache), how projects sustain themselves through sponsorship and foundations, the economics that make open source viable, and why enterprises depend on it despite the paradox of free software powering trillion-dollar industries.