I'd suggest reading up on the origins of "open source" and "free software".
> The philosophy of the movement is that the use of computers should not lead to people being prevented from cooperating with each other. In practice, this means rejecting proprietary software, which imposes such restrictions, and promoting free software, with the ultimate goal of liberating everyone in cyberspace – that is, every computer user.
This is a significant backbone of computer culture. Many of the old-school hackers (and hopefully the new-school ones) have philosophical and political principles, such as the human right to have access to general-purpose computing, encryption, privacy, and the right to read and change the source code, to know and have personal control over what you're running on your computer.
There are also business motivations for companies to participate in the open-source community, such as marketing and benefitting from the free labor of volunteers.
I'd suggest reading up on the origins of "open source" and "free software".
> The philosophy of the movement is that the use of computers should not lead to people being prevented from cooperating with each other. In practice, this means rejecting proprietary software, which imposes such restrictions, and promoting free software, with the ultimate goal of liberating everyone in cyberspace – that is, every computer user.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#T...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source-software_movement
This is a significant backbone of computer culture. Many of the old-school hackers (and hopefully the new-school ones) have philosophical and political principles, such as the human right to have access to general-purpose computing, encryption, privacy, and the right to read and change the source code, to know and have personal control over what you're running on your computer.
There are also business motivations for companies to participate in the open-source community, such as marketing and benefitting from the free labor of volunteers.