Open Source Software
When the personal computer was first released, it did not serve any practical need. Early computers were difficult to
program and required great attention to detail. However, many personal computer
enthusiasts immediately banded together
to build applications and solve problems. These computer enthusiasts were happy to share any programs they built and
solutions to problems they found; this collaboration enabled them to more quickly innovate and fix problems.
As software began to become a business, however, this idea of sharing everything fell out of favor, at least with some.
When a software program takes hundreds of man hours
to develop, it is understandable that the programmers do not want to
just give it away. This led to a new business model of restrictive software licensing, which required payment for software, a
model that is still dominant today. This model is sometimes referred to as closed source, as the source code is not made
available to others.
There are many, however, who feel that software should not be restricted. Just as with those early hobbyists in the
1970s, they feel that innovation and progress can be made much more rapidly if we share what we learn. In the 1990s, with
Internet access connecting more and more people together, the opensource
movement gained steam.
Opensource
software is software that makes the source code available for anyone to copy and use. For most of us, having
access to the source code of a program does us little good, as we are not programmers and won’t be able to do much with
it. The good news is that opensource
software is also available in a compiled format that we can simply download and
install. The opensource
movement has led to the development of some of the mostused
software in the world, including
the Firefox browser, the Linux operating system, and the Apache web server. Many also think opensource
software is
superior to closedsource
software. Because the source code is freely available, many programmers have contributed to opensource
software projects, adding features and fixing bugs.
Many businesses are wary of opensource
software precisely because the code is available for anyone to see. They feel
that this increases the risk of an attack. Others counter that this openness actually decreases the risk because the code is
exposed to thousands of programmers who can incorporate code changes to quickly patch vulnerabilities.
There are many arguments on both sides of the aisle for the benefits of the two models. Some benefits of the opensource
model are: