OPEN SOURCE
Transcript: What Is Open Source When we think of open source today, we usually think of software. As wonderful and widely used as open source software is, according to Linus Torvalds, "the future is open source everything." From foods and beverages to scientific and health research studies and advanced technological innovations, the world has turned to open source Open Source Software are free applications released under special licensing terms where the core coding is viewable and able to be edited to suit the needs of the user. Basically, an author or company creates an application then releases it for free distribution, sometimes in co-ordinated projects where it can be further developed by a community of programmers, working individually or in teams, to further refine the product. Sometimes thousands of programmers are involved. What Is Open Source Software? Open Source applications cover a myriad of uses - from entertainment to enterprise ecommerce. In fact, there's a very good chance that the server your site is hosted on may be powered entirely or in part by Open Source products. In the networking environment there are many types of software, a lot of this is closed source, however, for just about every piece of closed source software this is a free open source alternative. Some of the more popular ones are as follows: Closed source: Microsoft Windows Open source: Linux Possibly the best known open and closed source software on the market today. The free Linux system offers increased simplicity and ease of use as well as improved security than the Microsoft alternative. From a networking point of view Linux is based on the Unix system which was initially developed for Networking. Microsoft offers no such networking pedigree however does offer networking solutions. The closed Microsoft windows system it often criticized for its lack of effective security whereas Linux systems are considered a much more secure operative system Closed source: Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari Open source: Firefox These are examples of web browsers, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, although coming as standard and with no extra charge on many computer systems, are not free. However Firefox is freely distributed to the public free of charge. Firefox has become so popular in recent years that many websites have release figures from Google statistics stating that Firefox has overtaken internet explorer as the most popular web browser visiting their site. Closed source: Lime Wire Open source: Frost Wire These Peer to Peer file sharing programs are very popular with music downloaders however they do come under some criticism in that they often cause problems with the system they are installed on and may introduce malicious software to the computer. The open source version, Frost Wire claims to be more secure and will lead to less problems than its closed source alternative. Closed source: Norton Antivirus Open source: AVG Antivirus / ClamAV 1. WordPress 2. Magento 3. Mozilla Firefox 4. Mozilla Thunderbird 5. FileZilla 6. GnuCash 7. Audacity 8. GIMP 9. OpenOffice 10. VLC 11. Handbrake 12. Pidgin 13. Freemind 14. Notepad 15. 7-zip 16. Blender 17. PDFCreator 18. Calibre 19. TrueCrypt 20. Ubuntu The strength of the open source approach is the community that develops around a solution. Open source proponents also cite advantages, such as more rapid bug fixes, more brain and person power adding functionality, and its low cost (in many cases it's free). While these are just some of the advantages among many, there's also a downside to open source. So, are these open source management suites viable alternatives for IT organizations? They are, if the solution fits the needs of the IT organization, and if the IT organization has either the necessary resources to support the products and/or it subscribes to the right support option. Advantages Possibly the biggest advantage of open source software is the fact that everybody has the right to modify and tweak the source code. This means the code can be implemented in other pieces of software and adapted to changing environments. This access to the source code means that suddenly any number of people, skilled or otherwise, have now become programmers of the open source code. The implications of this are that bugs can be easily fixed. With closed source if there is a bug in certain software the user must wait for a new release whereas in open source the code can be altered and the bug can be fixed. The re-distribution of open source code is also promoted. Meaning that a bug fix can be instantly re-distributed instead of having to wait for a newer release. This also leads on to the point that a large software company who is providing closed source software may prolong bringing out a newer version of some software in order to maximize profits. As open source software is usually free, and there is no profit to be made, new versions are being released all the time. Another advantage of open source is