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Written by Stew
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Friday, 14 September 2007 |
 To some, its a way of life involving deep seated politics, to others, simply a way to avoid paying for software. Either way, Open Source or free software is slowly but surely becoming a force to be reckoned with. Let's take an example. Hmm..
"More than 20,000 computers from Party offices nationwide will switch to using OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office from early 2008. The Central Party’s Office is taking advice from enterprises for the project".
This a quote from a Vietnamese news service just two days ago. Governments and Enterprise across the globe are starting to adopt OpenOffice as their main productivity suite. IBM, or 'Big Blue' to those in the game, has also recently joined the OpenOffice community. A big player if ever there was one. In short, OpenOffice 2.0 is starting to make a name for itself as a really decent piece of software, prompting greater global adoption.
So why doesn't everyone move to OpenOffice and stop using Microsoft Office? Firstly most companies and a lot of individuals have already paid for their Microsoft productivity software and would be loath to ditch something that cost them money. Secondly, OpenOffice is good and works very well for basic functions but for for advanced functionality Microsoft has it beat, but only just. The consensus is that OpenOffice can do almost everything that Microsoft Office can.
So what do we mean by Open Source and is it different from plain old 'Free' software? Well, according Richard Stallman, there is a very significant difference, though for many it's not always clear what that difference is. I'll attempt to do my best here to clarify these muddy waters.
 Richard Stallman is the guy who came with the GNU General Public License (or GPL for short), a free Copyleft (as oppossed to Copyright) license which according to GNU.org :
..'is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users'.
The 'free software' movement was started by Stallman and his buddies in 1983, but in 1998 the 'Open Source software' movement began. Open source was a term considered less ambiguous and more applicable for the corporate world. The ambiguous nature of the word 'free' in English, in a way, lead to the birth of the term open source. The original ideology behind the definition of 'free software' would be comparative to 'free speech', not for example 'free food', or zero cost, which would contain anti-commercial connotations.
Both open source and free software use the GNU License and there are other licenses that offer similar legal protection. To the end user, open source and free software mean much the same thing, but to many, there remains a distinct political and ideological difference.
The Free Software movement contains social and moral ideals, where open source is more concerned with commercial or economic freedoms.
So is this stuff any good? What is the real difference to us end users?
 Mozilla Firefox is a piece of open source software, and it is free. In the last few years it has gained a lot of ground on Internet Explorer as the browser of choice. It is estimated that around between 10-15% of the worlds surfers use Firefox ( though there is ever confusion with some sites quoting as much as 30% or more). This may not seem like much, but considering Internet Explorer's historical dominance in this market, Firefox is doing well and still growing. Some analysts reckon that Firefox is more commonly used by techie people and IE by less techie people, or in my view, Firefox is popular with the well the informed, and IE with the ignorant. Most reviews in the last few years have given Firefox a better rating than any of the IE versions, or least on a par, so what is it that gives an open source application a technical edge over its commercial rivals or even allows it to compete at all with corporate funded software?
The source code is open.
You can take a look at it. Modify it. If you spot a flaw, or some inefficient code you can make changes to it and then submit it back to the community or individual that created it. Open source (and indeed just plain free) software has the advantage of being open to public scrutiny. Companies like Microsoft are working in a comparative vacuum. Can those guys working for big Bill possibly spot all the possible and potential weaknesses, or would it be better to let the whole world have a poke around to try and find potential threats?
The answer is in the source.
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