What is Open Source Software? Why use it?
My introduction to Open Source Software, OSS, was completely accidental. In 2008 my husband, a law student, and I, a hospital educator by day and freelance photographer in every other spare minute, were on a tight budget. Through a contentious series of events, some crucial system file got deleted on our shared desktop computer and all went quiet on the computer front. This hardware was precious. Embarrassingly, this particular PC housed a series of photographs I had taken for a local mayoral candidate that I had not yet backed up! In desperation, we turned to our more technologically advanced friends for advice. We had three options: 1, fork over the cash for a branded, full-system rebuild with Microsoft software; 2, chalk up our losses and buy a new computer; or 3, try out an open source operating system, Ubuntu, and keep our fingers crossed it would work. And work it did! We were so impressed that we haven’t looked back.
So what is open source software, anyway?
Not everyone has cause to seek out open source software for practical reasons nor peers who can steer them toward it. That said, users need not wait until a computer has been completely ruined to try out OSS. The advantages are immense and well beyond crisis intervention. Users who switch to group-generated software are freed from the corporate stronghold on computing. Although this is a philosophically- and ethically-freeing perspective, the free price tag resulting from collaborative creation doesn’t hurt either! Open source software is free, and is most often free of ideology and marketing. Users are secure in knowing open source will always be free due to lack of proprietary licensing. Licenses such as Creative Commons protect freedoms outside an economic construct. Without profit margins to be had, open source can focus on the user in primacy; users’ interest drives what is created not what will make the most cash. Community building is intrinsic; people work together to identify and correct flaws while new items are made beginning from egalitarian demand. Furthermore as users become more technically literate, the flexibility of open source allows for more intensive learning and even creation of code at the most advanced levels. On a broader scale, more and more companies (read=potential employers) are incorporating open source code. Because it is free and open, any entity can use open source and take advantage of the lack of license fees and solid, collaboratively-built code.
While open source software does offer many advantages over proprietary software, there are drawbacks, too. Most annoyingly for me is the lack of instant and exact compatibility between open source and proprietary softwares. For example, when I write a paper in Apache Open Office Writer at home, but then need to open and modify it on one of the VUB’s computers, sometimes the formatting is off, and not all fonts are cross-compatible. As a former Microsoft Office suite user, I sometimes get confused about how to access some functionalities of Excel, like tilt-shift tables, in Apache Open Office Calc. Thankfully, the internet helps me every time by having all the steps for processes I don’t often use readily available. These Open Office examples also intimate a larger complication; open source software takes a little more effort on the user’s part to figure it all out. Depending on your perspective, that is a pro or a con.
Source links:
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_movement#Strengths
http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Advantages_open_source_soft.html
http://creativecommons.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18466270
http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/08/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-open-source/
http://www.openoffice.org/
So what is open source software, anyway?
Not everyone has cause to seek out open source software for practical reasons nor peers who can steer them toward it. That said, users need not wait until a computer has been completely ruined to try out OSS. The advantages are immense and well beyond crisis intervention. Users who switch to group-generated software are freed from the corporate stronghold on computing. Although this is a philosophically- and ethically-freeing perspective, the free price tag resulting from collaborative creation doesn’t hurt either! Open source software is free, and is most often free of ideology and marketing. Users are secure in knowing open source will always be free due to lack of proprietary licensing. Licenses such as Creative Commons protect freedoms outside an economic construct. Without profit margins to be had, open source can focus on the user in primacy; users’ interest drives what is created not what will make the most cash. Community building is intrinsic; people work together to identify and correct flaws while new items are made beginning from egalitarian demand. Furthermore as users become more technically literate, the flexibility of open source allows for more intensive learning and even creation of code at the most advanced levels. On a broader scale, more and more companies (read=potential employers) are incorporating open source code. Because it is free and open, any entity can use open source and take advantage of the lack of license fees and solid, collaboratively-built code.
While open source software does offer many advantages over proprietary software, there are drawbacks, too. Most annoyingly for me is the lack of instant and exact compatibility between open source and proprietary softwares. For example, when I write a paper in Apache Open Office Writer at home, but then need to open and modify it on one of the VUB’s computers, sometimes the formatting is off, and not all fonts are cross-compatible. As a former Microsoft Office suite user, I sometimes get confused about how to access some functionalities of Excel, like tilt-shift tables, in Apache Open Office Calc. Thankfully, the internet helps me every time by having all the steps for processes I don’t often use readily available. These Open Office examples also intimate a larger complication; open source software takes a little more effort on the user’s part to figure it all out. Depending on your perspective, that is a pro or a con.
Source links:
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_movement#Strengths
http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Advantages_open_source_soft.html
http://creativecommons.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18466270
http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/08/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-open-source/
http://www.openoffice.org/
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