Open-source vs source-open

I asked from one of my friends, what opensource means to him. He said, if he has source then he is good with it. Is this the meaning of opensource software? Where is the community component?

If some one builds a software, in-house, and put it out with the source, is this opensource? I personally think there is something missing.

There seems to be a trend in larger projects, that the customers demand for source. Especially large clients (like governments) in Europe tend to lean towards opensource software. So most of the companies are trying to exploit this by putting something out as their source.

What is the meaning of this? In my personal opinion, people should like opensource, because it is/was a community effort and not by a single company. In these sorts of projects, if one contributing company goes out, then the clients have more options. Also there will be competition and better code/product through synergy and open discussions. Since users are also involved in this process, the ultimate product will be what users need.
If company A can not afford to build a software alone, they can create a community around it and build a software. This will benefit the company and also benefit other people as well.

But if you write your code internally, make all your decisions and put it, it is just like the automotive industry in 1970s. Customers get what a company wants and not what they want. Even if the clients get the source, it will be crappy most of the time :)

Apache has this nice rule where a project needs at least 3 different players to be recognized as a project within Apache. One of the reasons for this is to make sure, companies won't dump any code and then claim those are opensource.