Advantages of Open Source Software
The availability of the source code and the right to modify, it is very important to enable us to improve
and extend the lifetime of a software product.
Source code availability also makes it much easier to identify errors, and to fix them.
The right to redistribute modifications and improvements to the code, and to reuse other open source
code, permits all the advantages due to the modifiability of the software to be shared by large
communities.
For continuous improvement does not require users to pay for it. There is no single entity on which the
future of the software depends. This is a very common concern with proprietary software.
There are fewer conflicting priorities due to marketing pressures. Usually open source software is
delivered ``when it is ready'', and when the development team feels that its quality is good enough. This
means that software usually does not need as many ``service packs'', updates as such thereby reducing
the maintenance cost.
It provides a new forum for democratic action, collaboration, mutual benefit without geographical or
any other barrier/bias.
It forces commercial software vendors to keep their product price at a reasonable level.