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What is the meaning of close source? (lemy.lol)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I mean can't someone steal code from the devices file manager? or create his own fork?(Sorry for bad English)

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

In addition to the other listed reasons, going open source is an extra step.

The code has to be compiled to run on your system (if it's written in a non-interpreted language, which a huge portion of software is).

You can't just run the source code on your computer. And getting your customer's computer to compile the source code itself would require a massive amount of overhead.

So, to distribute your software, you're always almost always going to distribute an already compiled version, and you'd have to choose to give the customer the uncompiled version as just a separate thing on the side. And there's no real reason to do that for most companies.