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

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.