HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences ITFS-----

BaburamSubedi 1003537 04.04.2010

OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE.

Contrary to the public beliefs open source software are not merely those software which are available freely to public but, open source software are such software which are availably freely with their source code and any expert user can modify the code according to his/ her requirements. The user can develop the same open source software and study how it works. Obviously paid software is very expensive nowadays so the usage of open source software has save more than $55 billion of the users. If we look towards the history, the concept of open source software was generated almost13 years ago i.e. in 1998.The open source initiative (OSI) was founded in the same year by Raymond and Bruce. Previously campaign for free software was launched. Scholars Casson and Ryan different policies like security, affordability, transparency, perpetuity, interoperability and localization for healthy usage of open source software. On April 7, 1998 during Palo Alto meeting open source label was introduced. In 2008 US federal passed a new rule about free software licensing.While talking about open source software licensing the developer has right to his software. But he/she cannot sell software for monetary purpose if he takes the license of open source software. Every coin has its two sides likewise there are certain merits and some demerits of open source software. Firstly its cheap and freely available, companies can set up industry standard to get competitive benefits. Furthermore marketing and logistics fund required is less and also it fuels up the process of developing qualitative and convincible software in low cost thereby the change of innovation is tremendous. As the saying many heads many minds, people from worldwide who are involved in the development of open source software can bring various unique ideas which may be milestones for the development of software development. Also if we try to look towards the dark side of the open source software since its freely available chance of unauthorized and illegal usage is tremendous. Some open source software like SourceXchange etc. have been unsuccessful. It is also said that open source software are less customer centered and security applied in those software are not sufficient. There are lots of successful instances of open source software such as linux, GNOME, KDE, Apache, Firefox, Dovecot, Postfix, SuirrelMail, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, KOffice, Asterisk, FreeSwitch, GnuGk, GIMP etc. SouceXchange and Eazel are unsuccessful examples of open source software. In spite of many worldwide program developers large organization like Apache software foundation, linus Torvalds, eclipse foundation, Debian Project, Mozilla foundation, objectwebetc are involved in the development of the open source software. In summary, since there is the global debate of free learning and massive success of website like Wikipedia people worldwide are realizing the importance of free software. Every intellectual developers and Software engineers should involve in this mission and make the open source software development campaign secure, competitive and healthy. Even the closed source software development and governments around the world should provide full support to open source software development campaign then the future of open source software will definitely be good. THANK YOU

HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences ITFS-----

BaburamSubedi 1003537 04.04.2010

SOURCES; Wikipedia buzzle.com ictregulationtoolkit.org JOURNAL System Journal Sharma Srinarayan, VijayanSugumaran and Balaji; Framework for creating hybrid open source software communities. BOOK Rajiv Gupta Landry John, Profiting from open source.