Free as in beer or free as in free speech. This is the distinction that open source supporters use to describe the distinction between free products and open source(s). Free products are the same as free beer, something that you can accept and make use of. Open source is the same as free speech, a way to access, comment and contribute to the things that shape our world.

Among people that are not the familiar with open source, there is a belief that open source also means free. This is not necessarily the case. Steve Bosserman has set up a great typology for the different ways this can play out.

Quadrant A
Open and free: You can download content, software code or open designs for free.

Quadrant B
Open and paid: You can access the code for the software or design freely, but you have to pay for the product.

Quadrant C
Closed and free: The product is free to download, but the source code is not accessible.

Quadrant D
Closed and paid: The classic business model, where can not access the source code and you pay for the product.

Even if this is not necessary, a lot of the well known open source software projects are both free and open. Many projects have immensely benefitted the companies using the respective freemium model.

One example of this is IBM. Every year they pay for $100 million worth of programmer work on Apache – the open source server software.
IBM uses the expertise they gain during this work to sell emplimentation, consultation and software. They give something away for free that benefits a lot of people, they then make money from selling premium products to some of these people, Freemium.

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