Open-Source Software

2.4.3. Open-Source Software

Open source software is software that freely available to anyone in the world. The open source initiative is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to the development and promotion of open source software. User can download the source code and build the software themselves, or the software’s developers can make executable versions available along with the source. A number of open source software packages are widely used such as

• Linux, free BSD – Operating system
• Apache – a popular web server
• Send Mail –email software
• Perl – a server side web programming language

Although customers may question reliability of open source software, open source software can be reliable than commercial software due to the following reasons

• By keeping a program’s source code reliable available, user can fix any problems they discover.
• As the source code available to thousands of users around the world, the chance of bug being discovered and fixed before it does any damage is much greater than traditional software packages.

However, find support for open source software can be a problem. This can be done through the internet where open source community is operating in the world. Many companies are emerging to support and service such software for free.

Example: Red Hat for Linux and C2net for apache