The free software development model is essentially collaborative . A free software project generally brings together several developers who may be distant from each other. The Sourceforge site gives a good overview of the collaborative environments used in the development of free software.

Many companies are investing in free software. Some programmers are even employed, and therefore paid, to develop free software. This is the case for example within Red Hat, Mandrake and in companies such as Oracle or Sun.

Indeed, the open source community can count on collaboration with companies that develop proprietary software while using open source solutions. Thus, Oracle uses the Apache server and provides support for its customers on such free software. The free software community therefore benefits from the improvements made by these companies.

Given the large amount of people involved in the free software community, free software is much more dynamic and responsive than proprietary software.

Free software doesn’t have to be nonprofit. Indeed, several companies offer support and service. It is therefore possible to use free products or obtain support from these companies to have a framework similar to that of proprietary software.