this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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I built a new PC two months ago and it's the first time I didn't get Office. Libre Office has everything I need and it's free.
I've wondered about free suites like these - how do they make money, do you know?
They don’t. Libre Office is maintained by a non-profit called The Document Foundation. They’re funded entirely by donations. I think they make enough to have some full time employees.
A lot of open source software is created by individuals or non-profits. The Mozilla foundation makes Firefox, for instance. They make money through donations and also Google pays them a ton of money to be the default search engine.
There are for profit companies that make or contribute to open source software. Such as Red Hat. They tend to make money by selling support for the software.
I don't think they make money. It's an open source project where people donate their time as far as I know.
EDIT: I forgot to mention you can donate to the project. Something has to pay for web hosting, I guess.
A bit of donations, a bit of unpaid people contributing just to help others.
Donations. Volunteers.