Anyone can view, modify & share.

Open Source Software allows anyone to view, modify and share its source code. This enables collaboration from a larger group (not limited to just the original authors) to contribute to the development, adding features, fixing bugs, and patching security issues.
This approach is in contrast to the “Proprietary” or “closed source” approach where the author of the software retains exclusive rights to the source code.

Better Together

Instead of a bunch of people competing against each other, each one working on the same thing, Open Source fosters collaboration. People build on top of things built by others, with each contribution moving forward, together.

No lock-in

The greatest advantage of Open Source is it eliminates vendor lock-in. If you don’t like your current software provider, you can still continue using the software and get services from a different provider.

No Shady Business

It also restricts any shady behavior by the software as the source code can be checked by anyone using the software.

Easy to get started for everyone

While Open-Source doesn’t necessarily mean “Free”, most Open Source software is in fact free to use. This makes it fairly attractive to Students, Researchers, casual users, and people on a budget as there is no hefty price or subscription.

Wait, so how do they make money if it’s all free

Like I said Open-Source doesn’t necessarily mean Free, but the ones that are Free make money in other ways. e.g. donations, tips, sponsorships, paid support, consultation, and many others. This is a whole topic for another post.