Commercial Software

Usually, the business model for companies that develop commercial software is to sell the software license itself. If you want to use commercial software, you have to pay for a license, but you don’t really own the software. Some software companies may not allow you to use the software for particular purposes (such as getting into its code to study or change it) and you may only be able to use it for a fixed amount of time before having to pay for an upgrade or a new license. In certain cases, you can use the software for free, but only for learning purposes; you need to purchase a license for it if you want to use it professionally to generate income. In other cases, what you get for free is only a limited version of the software, and you need to purchase the full version in order to access all its features. Here’s where piracy comes in: some people can’t afford the software and others just don’t want to pay for it, so they use illegal copies, which results in a negative economic impact on the commercial software developers.

You can’t develop new features in commercial software if you’re not employed by the company that owns the software, and even if you are, you have to follow that company’s guidelines, of course (and you’re not allowed to copy your code or show it to the general public). Anyone may develop plug-ins, but you are not allowed to change the software core or its basic features.