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Have you ever imagined a world where technology is
restricted to only those people who are willing to pay for closed source
products? It would severely affect people’s education and many researches. It
would also be hard to share information with other people. Fortunately, we
don’t live in such world. Today, we have many open source software products which
lead us to new technologies. They are easily available to everyone and they are
cost-effective. They bring benefits to our society by giving opportunities to people
to use and understand the open source software.
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So what make open source software products different from closed software products? Well, they are not in terms of programming language or operating systems, but by the license that governs the use of open source software products. That is the reason why most of the open source software products are licensed under general public license (GPL). We can look and/or modify the source code from its original design, free of charge. In my opinion, this is the best part of open source products. For example, Linux is licensed under GPL. You can look at the source code and modify the original source code.
In my opinion, following are some key advantages of open
source software products:
- They are considerably less expensive when compared with closed software products.
- They are safe to use.
- Since they are not owned by a vendor, there is no vendor lock-in.
- They deliver better quality.
- We get right to access and modify the source code.
Overall, I believe that open source software
products will bring more innovations to the future.
Source:
http://www.mmmlaw.com/assets/files/article_238.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
http://www.mmmlaw.com/assets/files/article_238.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
Hi Nirav, the first thing that I can't help but notice about this article is that why in your 2nd picture Internet Explorer is in the list of open source software? Correct me if I'm wrong but I was never aware of Microsoft open-sourcing IE. That would be good though. I think you explained the concepts of open source pretty well. However, regarding your opinion of open source software delivering better quality than closed source software, I would have to disagree. Open source doesn't mean it's better quality. I think it's more like 50/50. You have some very good open source software and you also have some very good closed source software. They mostly work just as well. Even though for paid software you're likely to have better customer support.
ReplyDeleteHi Nirav, it is a good introduction article about the conception of Open Source. I agree that Open Source software provides us a cost-effective way to build our own system. But as Kiet said, it is hard to prove Open Source is better than closed source software. At the same time, I think we should pay attention to the security when using open source you are not familiar with. Overall, it is a good article especially the sources you cited are very useful to get further information about open source.
ReplyDeleteWell, Nirav, overall good start, your interpretation of the general idea about open source is correct, yet your introduction could be spiced a little bit. Overall your account about Open source providing the ability for one developer to maintain the open source work of another developer is excellent, which is impossible unless a developer is part of a company when the software is proprietary. Open Source software is a great approach to invent and to maintain the existence of a given piece of software. On the other hand, proprietary software is a necessary to keep the competition up. There is no competition when all the software is free. The problem is that many people like taking advantage of the work of others and profit from it. Proprietary software exists because it requires a Patent to be put on a given piece of software, and keep the source sealed. It is a dumb game to be honest, a form of monopoly. Some companies are greedy while others must be generous to win the customer over. Open source is the way to advance software while closed source is a way to sell software. If people would not take advantage of others and appropriate credits would be given, there would be no need to keep the source code closed.
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