Comparison of open-source and closed-source software: Difference between revisions

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===Innovation===

Open-source software has often been accused of being more derivative than innovative. This is true to some extent, mostly in the desktop arena. ThusFor example, [[GIMP]] is in many ways a reinvention of the functionality of [[Photoshop]], while [[OpenOffice.org]] is primarily designed as a plug-compatible replacement for [[Microsoft Office]].

Many of the largest well-known open source projects are either legacy code (e.g., FreeBSD or Apache) developed a long time ago independently of the open source movement, or by companies like Netscape (which open-sourced its code with the hope that they can compete better), or by companies like [[MySQL]] which use open source to lure customers for its more expensive licensed product. However, it is notable that most of these projects have seen major or even complete rewrites (in the case of the Mozilla and Apache 2 code, for example) and do not contain much of the original code.