Commercial Open Source is the term given to Corporations that are formed to make a profit out of their open source software project. Most of these companies look to get income not from selling licenses but from all the other services that can be supplied including support, training and hosting. Often there will be duel licensing, this means that there will be a completely free open source license (e.g GPL, see below) version which is normally unsupported but still very useable and a commercial version which may come with a subscription service that may contain warranties and support (Red Hat Linux is a good example although there are now many commercial open source companies).

{backbutton}