It can be difficult choosing the right tools for your company, but open source software is a great option for businesses across all industries. With open source, you have products with a design that is accessible to the public. This type of licensing agreement not only provides access to the underlying design of the product, but it also means that people can use the work in new ways.
Individuals are able to modify it for different purposes or integrate the product into new works. The idea is that if the design is open and accessible, it will encourage users to experiment and innovate, eventually leading to an advancement of the technology.
While the term is most commonly associated with software, you can find open source concepts in a wide range of other industries. It can be leveraged for online IT training and improving various internet browsers. However, for the purposes of this post, we are going to focus on what open source means in the context of the software industry.
What is Open Source?
When software is open source, it means the underlying source code is accessible to the public. This provides all users with the opportunity to inspect the code and look for ways that it can be modified and improved. Along with making these adjustments, users can look for flaws and vulnerabilities to enhance performance and make the software more secure.
Beyond this, open source offers the chance to use the open source code to create derivative works or include the open source software as a part a larger project. It also means that people around the world can use the program for a wider range of purposes than may typically be allowed with most proprietary software.
With proprietary software, you’re accessing a program that is essentially the property of a business or individual. The source code is not public and users are not allowed to make modifications without prior authorization from the owner.
There will also be limitations on the use based on the licensing agreement between the owner of the software and the user. Microsoft Office would be a good example of proprietary software, while Open Office would work as an example of open source software that serves a similar purpose.
How Open Source Works
The lifecycle of an open source program starts with a person or group developing a piece of software that they decide to make available to the public. Once it is open, others can inspect the source code, use the software how they see fit, and modify it to add new features or make improvements. With the collective knowledge being shared amongst all users, everyone benefits from the efforts of the entire community.
Since most open source software is free, people assume that it means that all works based on open source software must be too. This is not the case, however. Developers can still sell their work to the public, but they can’t copyright or patent any work derived from the open source program. In addition, they have to make the code public.
When your product code is public, it means that someone else could inspect it, find a way to make it better, and give the product away for free. For this reason, most businesses do not try to sell open source products directly. Instead, they tend to sell services and tools that work alongside the the existing product.
Open Source and the Internet
Open source is not just important to software developers; open source technology is also important for the internet. Many of the technologies that now power the internet are open source. You have various web servers that run on systems from Linux and Apache.
In addition to that, you have many of the world’s largest tech companies starting to open some of their proprietary technologies up to the open source community. This includes projects like Google Open Source and a wide range of open source technologies from Facebook.
By making technology more accessible, open source is a force that spurs innovation. Open source communities are responsible for some of the most important advances of our day. As developers and businesses see the benefits, more of them are going to continue to make some of their resources open source.