Difference between revisions of "Free and open-source software"

Some major open source software projects

Open-source software and similarly Free software* is a software development model involving loose networks of people connected by the internet who collaborate to create and evolve software that is also made freely available for anyone to use. Not only is the end product available to all but the source code used to create it is can be freely viewed and modified as well. This is the code that commercial software firms normally keep secret.

Making source code available means anyone with the programming ability can customise the software for their own ends or contribute to the development project directly. Others can help by reporting bugs and helping with documentation or translation efforts. So this encouragement of interaction between users and developers, and user becoming developers, creates a positive feedback loop in the software's evolution. Open source is becoming a very prominent method of software production and poses a serious challenge to commercial products - as the quality of open-source software approaches and supercedes commercial software, how will software companies compete with free?

What goes around comes around

If the software is useful to many people then there is a wide audience who can get involved. People are motivated to contribute because the result of their work benefits many people. Someone putting in effort on an open-source software project knows there are similar minded people putting in effort on other software projects that will be useful to them also. So what goes around comes around.

Maximum utility

The fact that thousands of other people are able to make use of the software having put in no effort themselves and haven't paid any money simply isn't an issue - after all it effectively costs nothing to replicate the software and the open-source developers are only too happy that it is proving useful to a wider audience. It is truly maximizing it's utility.

Commercial software that has restrictions on what you can do with it, such as not giving a copy to your friend, imposes an artificial scarcity on it in order that they can charge money for it. In the world of bits and the internet this commercial model doesn't make much sense and starts to break down.

Because of the mutual benefits, open source projects encourage collaboration on an almost unheard of scale, as well as promoting rapid evolution and stability of the applications being developed (one might normally consider the last two properties as being mutually exclusive). There are now high quality open source projects filling every major category of software application, including entire operating systems for your computer.

Beyond software

This methodology is not limited to software. A noteable example beyond software are 'open content' projects such as Wikipedia, the well known collaborative encyclopedia which is accessible and editable by anyone with a web browser. Started in 2001 it is now the largest encyclopedia in the world, grown organically by thousands of users, and the overall quality of articles is surprisingly good. [1]

With a few built-in mechanisms to make sure the project doesn't dissolve into total chaos, the result is that this pool of knowledge is assembled and edited by people who want to do it. No-one is paying them to do it and no-one is telling them to do it, they do it because they want to. It feels like the right thing to do - they are contributing to something greater. Contributors' know their efforts will be used and appreciated by thousands of other people, and that others are doing likewise.

It is apparent that these methods could also be applied to the design of physical machines and artifacts. Designs, photos, instructions and CAD models would be stored on the internet for others to use and improve upon. This method is even more suited to this than to software design as from looking at an object, photo or CAD model it is usually apparent how it has been designed. See the section on open design.

*Note: Free software is not the same as Freeware - the latter is not usually distributed with source code and the license may be restrictive.

See also

• List of some major open source projects
• Open design - applying principles of open source software development to the design of physical machines and artifacts

External links

• Wikipedia entry on the subject of Open source

Organisations

• http://www.fsf.org/ Free software foundation (FSF) website
• http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html FSF Free software definition
• http://www.opensource.org/OSI Open Source Initiative (OSI) website
• http://opensource.org/docs/definition.php OSI Open source definition

Software links

• Wikipedia list of open source software packages
• http://www.linux.org Free and open-source operating system
• http://www.OpenOffice.org Free and open-source office productivity software
• http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox Free and open-source web browser
• http://www.gimp.org Free and open source 2D bitmap-graphics editor
• http://www.blender.org Free and open-source 3D graphics modeller, animator and renderer

• The software that runs this website is open source and is called MediaWiki