What is Open Source Software?

In the simplest terms, open-source software is software you can share. It is freely available on the Internet, and anyone may use it. More importantly, users are encouraged to improve upon it. By sharing our improvements and ideas, pooling our resources with thousands, even millions of others around the world via the Internet, the open software community is able to create powerful, stable, reliable software, at very little cost.

The Open Source Certification

Software that is available only in binary executable format is proprietary software. Software that is available in source code format is open software. If open software meets certain criteria, it may also be certified as Open Source. If you are at all unclear about what is meant by "source code", you should read the brief explanation of How Programs Are Made.

Open Source is a phrase describing software licenses that meet the Open Source Definition. The trademark is administered by the Open Source Initiative, an organization founded on the principles of cooperation that launched Linux and the free software movement. Only software that meets the criteria described in the Open Source Definition may describe itself as Open Source.

What Does It Mean?

Open-source software is copyrighted software, and is distributed under a license agreement that gives special rights to users of the software, rights that are normally reserved for the author. Such a license allows all users to make and distribute copies of the software binaries and source code, without special permission from the author. Furthermore, it allows users to modify the source code, and distribute modified copies.

So what, you say? Why is Open Source important? Because it means that any programmer, anywhere in the world, can look at the source code, fix bugs and errors, add new features, and customize the system without limits. That is exactly how Linux has been developed from the beginning, and that is why Linux is a very stable system with few bugs, wide hardware support, and a feature set growing so fast that proprietary operating system vendors are jealous. The fact that the source code is open to review by experts all over the world insures that any problems are found and solved quickly, and the fixes can be distributed without restriction. This is much more effective and efficient than relying on a corporation to squeeze a "service pack" somewhere into its busy release schedule. After all, they don't get paid for service packs.

But the open software community is much larger than just the people who write the software. Everyone who uses the software participates in a real community and has a voice in its direction. You don't have to be a programmer. By merely reporting a bug to a program's author, or writing a simple "how-to" article, you contribute to the community and help to make the software better. Open-source software is written, documented, distributed and supported by the people who use it. That means that it is sensitive to your needs, not the needs of a corporation trying to sell it to you.

Of course, many companies also contribute to the development of open-source software, making their work available to the entire community, because they know the benefits of Open Source. Software that is supported by an entire community is by its nature better and more stable, and more and more companies are beginning to appreciate that fact.

Resources

For a detailed examination of how and why open source software is developed, read Eric S. Raymond's excellent essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Open source software is also called simply "free software", a phrase which refers not just to cost, but to freedom to use and modify it (think of free as in "free speech", not "free beer"). The idea of free or open software has been around for a long time. To learn more about it, visit The Free Software Foundation.

If you're considering open source software for your business, you should visit The Open Source Page to find out more. If you're not considering it, you probably should be. Take a look anyway, and learn how the open source community can add stability, scalability, and power to your business, while actually reducing expenses.