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Straight To The Source Forget the hassles of licensing software. Feel free to play with the programming. And hey, there's no purchase cost.

By John W. Verity

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Charging customers no money for a major product may not seem tomake much business sense, but that's exactly what a growingnumber of software companies are doing these days. They'rejumping into the so-called open-source market, where giving awayhefty and normally pricey programs is the norm, and profits comemainly from selling follow-up technical support, how-to manuals,and periodic updates and add-ons.

The open-source market is a boon to entrepreneurs, who can nowget for free what they paid hundreds, or even thousands, of dollarsfor in the past. Among the products currently available: Web serverand browser programs, e-mail packages, sophisticated graphicsprograms, financial-management titles, a variety of technicalprograms used mainly by programmers, and Linux (a full-blownoperating system for IBM-compatible PCs and other computers).

Open-source, as you might guess, is a truly Internet-drivenphenomenon. For one thing, these programs are made available fordownloading from the Internet; but unlike shareware, there's nomoral obligation to pay. More important, though, anyone can inspectand build on their source codes--the actual computer instructionsthat normally only a software company's programmers would beallowed to see and modify.