How Free Software Makes Billions

The open source software industry powers the modern digital economy, acting as the invisible engine behind 90% of the applications we use daily. But how exactly do technology companies generate billions of dollars in revenue from software they give away for completely free? This documentary dives deep into the business of open source to uncover the hidden revenue streams, dual licensing models, and enterprise support contracts that make this counterintuitive strategy so highly lucrative. We explore how tech giants like Red Hat and MongoDB achieve massive, viral adoption and turn crowdsourced engineering into a global enterprise standard. You will also learn about the harsh realities and existential threats these companies face, including severe maintainer burnout and corporate hijacking by massive cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS). Discover why open source is not a charity project, but one of the most brilliant, aggressive, and disruptive business strategies of the twenty-first century.