OpenSource: Who invented this Nobel idea ?

     I wouldn't have come across "Open-source" hadn't I been studying Computer Science or for that sake technology. My experience with Open-Source came when I was first introduced to Linux Operating system. Well, I was flabbergasted by this totally and astonished to know that there were so many people who were contributing so much to open source software. 

    So, to know about it I decided to write something about it. It all started in the 1980s when Richard Stallman, created the Free Software foundation to support his idea (that code should be made available for the software you use or pay for). According to Stallman, rejecting proprietary software and promoting free software should be the ultimate goal. He thought this would promote rather than hinder the progression of technology. (and I must agree, he was totally right then..)

 
    With this began the era of free software which became to be known as Open Source Foundation. And if you go by the numbers today, mostly all of the software which are used in the industry are open-source. The perfect example of this would be Android itself, which is being used of millions of people today. As a matter of fact, all server used in data centers use some distribution of Linux which is suited for their application. Being a software engineer myself, we often use Open-source products over proprietary ones.

 
    Open-source does have many advantages which are not available in proprietary software. The users of Open-Source software are free to modify the software as per ones choice and requirements. There is a open community for every software being developed under this license where you can suggest changes/bugs and even modify them. The whole idea behind using an open-source software is flexibility and great technical support for the product. 

    One would think who gets the time to do anything for free for people. Well, the contributors of such software applications want to contribute to this enormous community because, it may have helped them at some point and that they want to give some back to them/they believe in the same ideology like Stallman (if not for them, I definitely feel so..). Stallman believed, "proprietary software is wasteful duplication of system programming, and that can be used instead into advancing the state of the art" . 

    The importance of open-source software and its reach can be felt, when we see executives from companies like Microsoft, one of the pioneers of proprietary software business quoting in 2001, "open-source is an intellectual property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the soft-ware business and the intellectual-property business." And later making official open-source presence on the Internet. The list of all open-source software by Microsoft can be found here. (the list is hugeeeee)

    Finally, I would conclude with a quote from one of our professors in San Jose State, Joel West, "While social change may occur as an unintended by-product of technological change, advocates of new technologies often have promoted them as instruments of positive social change." This explains much of the philosophy that free source movement is alive. To know about various open-source licenses, you might want to visit this link, and to know what are the different software available check this out.

Stay tuned!