In 1983, the idea of open source technology came out as a revolutionary step in the software development field, where Richard Stallman found this ideological movement of making source codes of the software accessible to programmers. From 1983 to now, we can witness 180,000 open-source projects available and 1400 unique licences available to handle these projects.
It is found that open source technologies provided many opportunities, an extensive amount of innovations and stability to the software development field. In this article, we will discuss how these technologies provided so many changes in the sector using the following points:
Table of Contents
- What is Open Source Software?
- Need for Open Source Software
- How does Open Source Software work?
- Examples of Open Source
What is Open Source Software?
When the source codes of any software are accessible to everyone for inspecting, modifying and enhancing, the software is called open source software(OSS).
In traditional ways, these source codes were a part of the software that most computer users couldn’t see. When we talk about source codes of any software, we can say that they are the building block of any software and can be manipulated by computer programmers. The changes performed by programmers are intended to make changes to the program or application of the software.
When it comes to the protection of open source software and communities, the open source initiatives(OSI) come into the picture that acts as a governing and central information repository of open source software. The OSI comes with guides and rules that decide the use and interaction with OSS and includes support and community information, and definitions to help users understand and treat OSS ethically.
Need for Open Source Software
Various reasons make OSS important in today’s scenarios. Some of them are as follows:
- Control: Control of any software is one of the important requirements nowadays, and people want to know how the building blocks and source codes are designed to perform any task. So if they find something not required or needs some changes, they can accomplish it by themselves instead of using a standard for all versions of software.
- Innovation: one major reason behind the success of OSS is it allows people to come and perform practicals on the source codes so that they can either use the OSS efficiently or study and learn from the codes. This learning directly leads to more innovative approaches to programming also, as people can improve OSS, which is beneficial for the OSS communities.
- Stability: many users find that a well-managed OSS are more stable than closed source software. The forums and community pages of an OSS help it keep track of bugs and improvements. Also, people from outside management and the development team can handle these bug fixes and improvements.
- Security: Many consider OSS more secure than closed-source software in their workflow. Since many programmers can work together to resolve the unspotted errors by the author, it becomes a more feasible and quickest way to solve them.
How does Open Source Software work?
As described above, source codes of OSS are available to everyone, which means they are stored in a public repository so one can use them independently. Instead of just using them, one can also perform code changes so that OSS’s design and functionality can improve.
In case of source code changes taking place, OSS requires recording and maintaining those changes, including the method of performing changes.
Examples of Open Source
The Internet is one of the best examples of open source, where most of the fundamental function we find on the Internet is built in the open source environment. For example, Linux OS helps regulate the web server’s operation and the apache web server application, help data transfer between the personal devices and world wide web infrastructure or vice versa. As given above, there are countless applications and software that are open source.
We can also witness that large internet companies like Facebook and Google have made their various software open-sourced to benefit from more innovations and enhanced stability.
Now we know open source development welcomes innovation through collaboration and is a reason behind many different and new technology that meet us instead of taking them for granted. Because of open source involvement, we can see the breakneck speed of software development.
Final words
This article discusses the meaning, requirement, and working of open source software(OSS) and the difference between open source software. Because of this discussion, we get to know that making any software or project open-sourced opens many doors for development and improvement. Also, this step moves us towards social causes because it not only helps many programmers to learn and innovate but also pushes them to see how these projects work in resolving real-life use cases.
We admire this approach because it showcases a desire to share and transparently collaborate with others. Using this technology, we find ourselves playing an important and active role in developing a better world because everyone is contributing to us and helping us impact areas like finance, retail, health, education, and manufacturing using open source values.