What is the benefit for developing open source software?

There ane many reasons, which are NOT surprisingly all related to making profit of the software :-)

1. They give you a feature rich open source software for free and charge you big money for support. Such software, of the top of my head, is: MySQL (open source), JBOSS (open source), ...
2. The software contains ads to same or other company software such as Skype (closed source), uTorrent (closed source)
3. Sometimes, the free software is only free for personal/non-commertial use. If you like the software and want to use it for commercial or in business environment then a licesn$e may be needed, such as : TeamViewer (closed source)
4. Sort of advertisement to the company for publicity. They provide some software for free just to make thmeselves famous and make people like them and then charge you for other products and services you may like (such as Comodo)
5. Sometimes the free/open software can be used effeciently with another product from the same/other company that is not free. The software is created hoping that customers will like it and get used to it and then buy the other product
6. Sometimes, only the standard (feature-limited) version of a product is free and/open source. If a customer wants the full-fledged software then he needs to buy it (such as Office/Office starter and many other software)

Aside from all this, there are many TRUE FREE and OPEN source software/SDKs out there that have nothing to do with earning money. Simply those people like to fill their free time with coding!

It is a good start for software product; once you get the attention of users, you can easily charge them for fees and if they really like your product they will pay.

you have the authority to change the source code , review, test update ......etc

Today open-source software has become critical for almost every organization. Almost everything requires open source software, be it telecommunication systems, inventory, accounting, personal productivity applications, contact management and operating systems amongst others

If a customer need full fledged software then he must buy open source software.

1. The software contains ads to same or other company software such as Skype (closed source), uTorrent (closed source)
2. Sometimes, the free software is only free for personal/non-commertial use. If you like the software and want to use it for commercial or in business environment then a licesn$e may be needed, such as : TeamViewer