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We've all heard a lot of talk about open source, a software
application development paradigm that puts development into the hands
of a loosely defined community of programmers. Linux in particular, an
open source operating system developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991,
seems to be the poster child for the movement.
Open source is nothing new to computing; it has been the underpinning
of the Internet for years. Open source software is an idea whose time
has finally come. For twenty years it has been building momentum in
the technical cultures that built the Internet and the World Wide Web.
Now it's breaking out into the commercial world, and that's changing
all the rules.
Open Source software puts a new marketing face on a long tradition of
enterprise-class free software. Unlike closed source, packaged
applications, when you use Open Source software, you get the source
code, which you can modify to fit your needs. You can incorporate Open
Source code into commercial products without restriction. Open Source
solutions are available for almost any conceivable application. Some
of the world's largest companies, as well as the Internet itself,
depend on Open Source for enterprise applications.
The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can
read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of
software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it,
and people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is
used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems
astonishing.
The motives (or at least the emphasis) of the people who use the term
``open source'' are sometimes different than those who use the term
``Free Software.'' The term ``open source software'' (a term
championed by Eric Raymond) is often used by people who wish to stress
aspects such as high reliability and flexibility of the resulting
program as the primary motivation for developing such software. In
contrast, the term ``Free Software'' (used in this way) stresses
freedom from control by another (the standard explanation is ``think
free speech, not free beer'').