Open Source

Advances in computer technology, especially on the software end, are happening constantly. Big name companies like Microsoft, Adobe, and Macromedia all thrive on the need for newer and better software. The reason they thrive is because they charge people a lot of money to use their products. Perhaps an even faster growing software movement is open source. The term open source may seem fairly straight forward, but in terms of software, it has several, varying meanings from person to person.

One fairly common misconception about open source software is the belief that it is any program that can be obtained for free, legally. If this was the case, that open source software is simply any free software, then programs like AOL Instant Messenger and iTunes would fall under the category of open source. These programs would more properly by labeled as freeware because they are indeed free, but they violate the most important aspect of open source software. For software to be considered open source, the source, the code that makes the program do what it does, must be made available to anyone who wishes to work on it, to make it better, or to use parts of the code to help with another project. The examples give most definitely would not give out their code for free to anyone who wants to try to make their software better. They would see it as someone trying to best them, which would be bad for business in other areas. In fact, they would probably sue you for every penny you are worth if they found out that you had somehow obtained their code and reused it in any way. So, the first key to open source coding is that it must be available for anyone to work on.

Some people believe that the only open source software around is Linux. This is another common misconception about open source software. Linux is most definitely the largest scale project in the open source community, but it is far from the only one. Part of the reason for this misconception might be that a lot of open source software is made to run on the Linux operating system. There are not many professional companies who devote time to making software to run off of a constantly changing open source operating system, so most of the programs that run on Linux are open source as well. Because of this, open source programs can be found in any genus of computer software from chat programs, to peer to peer networking programs, to even video editing programs. Because of the open source community, Linux is not as limited as it may seem without any big commercial software developers for supporting software.

People who make viruses and other malicious software also typically consider themselves to be a part of the open source community. After making a genius program that will work wonders at making other people’s lives miserable, they want to show off their so called brilliance to others by making the coding available for others to admire. They will receive praise from some, and scorn from others, but the coding is available to anyone who wishes it so must be open source right? Wrong; there are several problems with the idea of malicious works being considered open source. Taken literally, the source is indeed open, but there it also violates one of the fundamentals of open source programming. This fundamental touches on the philosophical end of open source programming which is the intent. The open source community was created to speed the process of software development by allowing any and all to contribute their ideas to projects. The idea was to take out the secrecy that is involved in software creation with big name competing companies who are just out to make profits in order to work in an environment without the hindrance of copyrighted material or the fear of ideas being stolen. Everyone is just working to make things better in the open source community, and malicious software only puts a damper on the work. So, another fundamental of open source is that there must be intent to help advances in computer software.

After a little bit of close examination, it can be seen that open source software is software for which the code is made available to any and all who want it and that there must be an intent to make advances in computer software. It can also be seen that Linux is not the only open source software and that there are several kinds of open source software. By this definition, malicious software, as well as software protected by copyright in which distribution of the code is prohibited is excluded from the lists of open source software.