Open source projects use licenses that retain the ownership of the source code to the community. Such licenses as the General Public License (GPL) and Creative Commons Licenses (CC) are examples of how software and creative works can be distributed, shared and built upon without an individual or company claiming ownership. By assigning this "freedom" to the work, others in the community with similar interest add to the project knowing that their contribution remains in the public ownership. This is not to say that the work has to be "free" of charge, although most licenses that retain the Copyright stipulate the source code or source of original work cannot be charged for.
As a side note the "Open Source Initiative" is referred to here rather than the "Free Software Foundation" purely to avoid the confusion of the word "free" in the title.
If you use a gym you expect to pay a membership for use of the equipment, the building, the staff time. Travelling to the gym you use up fuel and other resources, all that you pay directly for. But when we use the internet it becomes a different scenario. Most have a broadband subscription service, or pay as you use dial up, that enables their computer or mobile phone to connect to the internet, but once on the web there are few examples of where we pay for those services that we use. As an example consider the Google search engine. Without knowing the number of machines or architecture that runs this service, I can only guess there to be literally thousands of servers dedicated to gathering, indexing and storing website content just to respond to our search query requests, all of which has to be paid for by other means; usually advertising. But if these services were not free of charge how many people would use them?
So free of charge is a different concept to the freedom for software being bound to Copyright ownership, despite their symbiotic relationship with regards to the internet. Although there are numerous examples, such as search engines, where the application is proprietary owned but the service is without charge there are also numerous examples where open source software is used as part of a pay for service. The most common of these is the significant number of web servers themselves that use Linux based operating systems and the Apache HTTP Server, where it is not the applications that are charged for but the hardware, setting up, and maintenance of these servers. These of course are not directly charged to the visitors on a website but absorbed by the website owners as a cost of having a web presence.
The same can be said for the software applications that we use. Applications as "Wiki", "osCommerce", "Magento", "phpBB", "Vanilla" are all examples of web applications where the ownership of the Copyright is left in place.
The "Wikipedia" http://www.wikipedia.org is a huge international success example of a website based on the "Wiki" application. The concept of common ownership is extended to the content of the site. As the site is reliant on users updating and adding to the content the agreement for this content ensures no individual or company can claim rights to the information. But if a charge was made to the users of the site to cover costs of running and maintaining the service whilst the owners make an income, then the survival of the site would be doubtful.
Many businesses on the internet are also dependent on Open Source projects. "The Nursery Shop" http://www.thenurseryshop.com is one such example that uses the OpenCart application to run its online baby and children toys, gifts and clothes store. The choice of this application over others was based on the technical excellence and functionality of the software rather than cost. But as is good etiquette, finding a project that you find useful then you should help support it either through a donation to help pay for the cost of hosting servers, contributions of code and modules, and or provide contributions to the documentation and how to guides.
Software development that leave the copy in place has flourished with the internet producing high quality application and helping developers improve and test their skills in an environment that encourages freedom. However in many ways it is socially degrading that we have adapted and warped this concept to expect the internet and all it has to offer as being free without direct cost.
Source: ezinearticles.com