Open Source - The base of every Software
Ever wondered why open source is so popular?
Even after more than 30 years, open source plays a vital role in the development of many software....ever thought of its reason?
Take an application that we use in our daily life, WhatsApp for instance. It has some set of programs and security measures of its own. If whatsapp is open source, we can learn about the architecture of the software and how the software provides the solutions to the underlying problems of the user. Since the source code of the application is publicly available for all , we can also help the developer team to fix minor bugs and modify the features that we use.
Through this article, we hope to explore the importance of Open Source and its necessity.
How did open source show up ?
History of open source dates to 1980, when Richard Stallman found the Free Software Foundation(FSF) and launched the GNU (GNU's Not Unix) project in 1983. They aimed to create a completely free Unix-like operating system, providing users the freedom to run, modify, and share software.The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was also founded in 1998 to promote open-source software and its benefits to businesses.
These initiatives played a major role for the rise of popular open source software like Mozilla Firefox, Apache, Linux and lot more....
Open Source in the Enterprise world
Now, let's consider some of the factors that are in focus when an enterprise adopts open source practices to develop their software....
The first is the strength of the vast community:
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that exists where people from the various parts of the world come up with various solutions and a variety of problems that would increase the quality of the product that the customers use.
The second is the cost and labour efficiency:
even enterprises could get better efficiency by reducing the investments on hiring the laborers to improve the open source products.
The third is that people believe that open source is safe.
Every software has its own risk. But the reason why people believe in safety in open source is that in here, a vibrant community of users and developers can get rid of the risk factors easily.
Open source is indeed important
Though most people don’t realize it, much of the technology we rely on every day runs on open source such as the Linux kernel operating system, the Apache and Nginx web servers, which run over 60% of the world’s websites, and Kubernetes, which powers cloud computing.
With the number of stakeholders involved in the FOSS ecosystem, it is difficult for any single actor to solve all of the issues. The future of FOSS security and growth will rely on collaboration between companies, governments, and individuals. However, understanding the scope of the problem must occur first. We believe that our efforts result in a discussion that would be a good step in that direction.
You can also refer to an article on "7 shades of FOSS" article, on which I understood how open source contributes to software developers.