The Open Source Software Model

The Open Source Software Model

Introduction:

We’ve all heard a lot of talk about open source, a software application development paradigm that puts development into the hands of a loosely defined community of programmers. Linux in particular, an open source operating system developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991, seems to be the poster child for the movement.

Open source is nothing new to computing; it has been the underpinning of the Internet for years. Open source software is an idea whose time has finally come. For twenty years it has been building momentum in the technical cultures that built the Internet and the World Wide Web. Now it's breaking out into the commercial world, and that's changing all the rules.

Open Source software puts a new marketing face on a long tradition of enterprise-class free software. Unlike closed source, packaged applications, when you use Open Source software, you get the source code, which you can modify to fit your needs. You can incorporate Open Source code into commercial products without restriction. Open Source solutions are available for almost any conceivable application. Some of the world's largest companies, as well as the Internet itself, depend on Open Source for enterprise applications.

The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.


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