Getting something without paying a dollar - "Free" is awesome. The "Free" label attracts nearly every human being on earth, which is expected behavior.
Computers are everywhere - in engineering field, medical, education, art and communication fields to name a few. What powers computer? It's software. It's Obvious that the real power comes from hardware on top of which software runs, but for end-users it doesn't matter. The real interaction with computer happens through software.
Building a computer software requires a language and set of other supporting tools and software. Developers build software and there are hundreds of languages and tools that they can choose from. Now what if those tools and languages required a price to pay for using them to build a software? If that was the case today, computers would have not seen the advancement and innovation that we see today. What could be the reason? It's simple. There will be a smaller audience interested in paying for a software and using it than a larger audience willing to use it for free towards a good cause.
"2 hands are better than 1". This also applies to computer software. Computer software are prone to errors and requires careful development and testing. The more number of eyes sees the source code and carries out testing, the more stable and reliable it becomes. This is exactly the case with Open Source software.
Open Source software are licensed under "free license" and can be redistributed and are allowed to be modified/improved. The source code for the Open Source software is available to public for use and/or modification. I believe there are several advantages of making a software Open Source. I list some of them as per my opinion.
1) It improves the original release of source code and helps remove bugs and other problems.
2) People from around the world can make a contribution towards the betterment of software and helps a wider audience to connect with each other. This also promotes networking opportunity with a community for the Open Source software.
3) It provides ample of learning opportunities. Contributing in an Open Source software helps an individual learn new technologies which certainly helps towards their career growth.
4) People can get recognized for their contribution towards Open Source software.
5) It brings innovation and advancement as different minded people with different background and experience works on Open Source software.
Lastly, the most important advantage that I believe is:
Open Source software have at least the same number of functionality as their Proprietary counter part software. Most of the people requiring the use of such software do not need advanced features provided by proprietary software and only needs a number of basic features which Open Source software provides. It doesn't make sense to buy a costly proprietary software for some number of basic features. Also, if users feel the need of using advanced features, based on the experience with Open Source software they can always buy the full-featured software (which can be a closed source software).
The most successful example of keeping a software/platform Open Source is Linux. It is the best example of open source software collaboration. Other such popular platform is Android and is no doubt very popular mobile operating system around the globe.
As software program developer, I would recommend making the best out of Open Source software, both as a user and contributor. Presently, I personally am using language R (statistical analysis) and I am glad I get nearly all features of MATLAB via Open Source package R without paying a dollar (MATLAB full version costs hundred of dollars). List of Open Source software can be found here.
Hi Mehal,
ReplyDeleteWhile I was writing my own blog about Open Source I found myself thinking the same question of why, why are the free open source software, what is the motivation behind this idea? Let me just say you did a wonderful job of explaining what Open Source Software is and what are the motivations behind developing Open Source.
I myself do not really know a lot about Open Source and have not delved too much into the stuff that is out there so it was interesting to read the benefits of Open Source and why a lot of people are interested in them (besides being free of course!)
Your blog post was great! The only fault that poked out to me was the title. Maybe it would have been better phrased “Why is it ‘free’?” instead of “Why it’s ‘free’?” Anyways great job, keep it up!
You brought up many great points about the advantages of open source. I think the best point you mentioned is that with the open source software computers and their related software were able to improve much faster. A point, which you brought up as well, that is very important about open source is that people from around the world contribute for the betterment of the software. The open contribution most significantly contributes to security. This can be related to all the major security algorithms used for data protection and integrity: DES, AES, MDA5, SHA1, etc. All the algorithms are open to the public to make them more secure, as you said "2 hands are better than 1."
ReplyDeleteI think you blog had a lot of information about open source. Minor grammar errors but otherwise perfect.