2010/12/29 Sagar Belure sagar.belure@gmail.com:
Maybe I'm asking another noob question. But, wanted to know, how the big companies gain profit who run Free and Open Source project like Mozilla, Apache, etc.
They don't. They are run by non-profit organizations. Mozilla has a deal with Google to set the default search to Google, for which they get paid a hefty sum which pays for developers and infrastructure. Apache developers are paid by the companies that benefit from the project.
Redhat is an out-and-out commercial organization that offers support as a service; many big companies pay Redhat for support.
Of course, even if you are working for Free and Open source projects, there has to be some income.
Indeed. And the idea of Free Software is that you don't make money by selling software written by somebody else; you instead provide value-addition over the base software.
Binand