It can be modified to fit a company's or individual's needs.
As long as it's kept in-house, there is no obligation to share the customizations to the source code.
Some licenses allow value-added resale of the source code, while others forbid resale of any sort.
Clearing The Air
The motto of the open source software movement could be "seeing is believing," because transparency and openness is valued above all else. Most people have heard of the open source software movement though Linux and the operating systems that use Linux-Red Hat is probably the most well known.
Open source software is often free, but not always. To qualify as open source, the code that powers the software has to be made available so that programmers can use snippets of the code in other projects, can modify the program as a whole to meet their needs, or, can use the program as a base to build on top of. This means that someone could purchase an open source CRM solution and use it as-is, but then as their business needs change, modify the code to add new features.
Some open source software licenses allow people to repackage and resell the modified code, others specify that almost anything is permissible except reselling. Open source purists might say not allowing resale disqualifies a program as strictly open source. But, for business purposes, the most important things about open source software is transparency of the program's inner workings.
Why this nearly religious fervor about visibility? Open source advocates say that with visibility comes security, stability and flexibility. All of these things come from the "two heads are better than one" approach-there is a large community of developers who can examine the code and note security flaws, stability issues and ways to expand the software.
Also, by looking beyond packaging and marketing into the core of a product, those who understand what they're looking at are able to make better decisions about what software their company should purchase.
Imagine buying a car and asking a mechanic friend to peek under the hood. When the mechanic arrives on the lot, the mechanic sees that the hood is welded shut and the seller won't provide any blueprints or diagrams-this is what propriety software manufacturers ask of buyers, say open source advocates.
Survival of the Fittest?
Sometimes, discussions about open source spill over into a philosophical debate about values, and how a free market should operate. Proponents of open source say that an evolutionary approach is inherent in open source software. In other words, software with the best features and the "cleanest code" survive. This is at odds with proprietary software, where many times the marketing of a product determines its success in the marketplace, not its technical advantages over its competition.
The history of modern commerce is littered with good ideas that lost to inferior products that had more marketing and distribution muscle behind them. This is ultimately bad for the consumer, open source software proponents say, as buyers have less choices, and less information about their choices, than they should. This also means that the consumer winds up paying for marketing, not product development.
Anyone who looks into the open source movement might notice a free market, libertarian bent. Along with this, there is a sometimes emotional dislike of the big software companies who in the words of open sourcers, enjoy "near-monopoly status."
Those who don't completely buy the open source argument might note that although the principles are admirable, many idealistic, visionary projects haven't worked out as expected in the real world. There is no substitute for having a corporation with a vested financial interest in keeping its customers and growing its proprietary product, some say.
