open source

"Why is this app free? What's the catch?" Tunde asked, staring at the invoicing tool his cousin in Leeds had just recommended. "No catch," she said. "It's open source. Anybody with the skill can look at the code, fix it, even build their own version from it. Nobody owns it like that."

That is the whole idea in one breath. Most software you use, your banking app, the game on your phone, is proprietary. The company that built it guards the code like a family recipe, and you only get to use the finished dish. Open source flips that. The recipe itself is published for the world to read, taste and improve.

Think of it like a market woman in Aba who, instead of hiding how she makes her groundnut oil so sweet, writes the whole process on a signboard for other sellers to copy and even improve on. Strange move for business, you might think, yet that openness is exactly what has built some of the biggest tools on earth. Linux, the operating system running most of the world's servers, is open source. WordPress, powering a huge chunk of websites including many Nigerian business sites, is open source too.

For a Nigerian entrepreneur, this matters practically. You do not need ₦2,000,000 to licence software before you launch your startup. You can build on free, open source tools, save that money for marketing or stock, and only pay when you need extra features or support. Many diaspora Nigerians building small tech side projects for family back home start this exact way, using open source frameworks instead of paying steep licensing fees abroad.

The trade off is that open source usually comes with less hand holding. There is no customer care line to call at 2am. You either learn to fix things yourself, hire someone who can, or lean on the community of other users online who share solutions for free.