The Growth of Open Source Software
Software is something that everyone uses every single day, sometimes without even knowing it. However, not everyone knows about how the tools they use are actually built which is something that really does need to be changed. Open source software is something that users should prefer to use and in this article we’re going to explain why that is and even give some examples to back up what we’re saying.
Before we give a list of advantages, we should probably explain what open source software actually is. A lot of tools that users are familiar with are developed by big corporations. Nobody else has access to the source code, only the development team are able to contribute and release updates. However, open source means exactly as it describes – the source code is open to anyone who wants to take a look at it. Anyone with an interest in programming and software development can test it and even contribute their own features and suggestions to the rest of the community, so that everyone can work together to release a better tool. Now let’s move onto the benefits.
Features – As you might expect, if more developers are able to work on it then more features can also be added. This depends on the project itself though – some are quite small and don’t have a huge community behind it whereas tools such as OpenOffice.org, an office package built to rival Microsoft Office, has a community of thousands of developers who release updates packed with new functionality. This is one of the biggest success stories – it’s a free tool that has millions of users around the world and is a strong competitor to Microsoft’s program. These types of applications can be obtained from many different websites, like this one.
Updates – Again it does depend entirely on the project but generally speaking updates can be released quicker in a community-led environment. This is especially important if, for example, a security bug was found which could be exploited by hackers. GIMP, a popular image editing application tends to release updates much more frequently than tools in the same market such as Adobe Photoshop. It is of course difficult to compare the two based just on the frequency of updates but it’s still helpful to get these quicker.
Support – If you have a problem with the tool you’re using you also want to be able to contact someone to request assistance and to find out how to solve it. In a lot of cases it’s easier to do this by asking a community of people rather than contacting the technical support department of a large company. Most open source projects have public forums which give people a place to refer to and ask questions if they need to which I think is a much better way of getting something resolved. It also means that multiple people can join in the discussion easily if required.
In conclusion, I’ve listed three of the biggest advantages of sticking to open source tools here. It’s time that users started taking a bigger interest in how the programs they use are developed and how they’re supported. There has been a huge increase in these types of projects in recent years and this is undoubtedly because of how helpful they are to users. There have been many successes so far and of course, no article about open source projects would be complete without talking about the Linux operating system. Tens of thousands of developers all working together to create a free OS that anyone can use.
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