Open-source software movement

Overview

The open-source software movement had its roots among computer hobbyists and computer scientists in the 1970s, and formally emerged in the early 1980s. It is an approach to software development and distribution, as well as a philosophy of knowledge sharing. The first people to tinker with computers that were small enough to use in the home (as opposed to the enormous, vacuum-tube powered devices that preceded them) did so for love of the hobby, and when they created programs that worked and proved useful, they would happily share them with one another. Gradually, this began to change as newcomers to the hobby saw it as a pursuit with business potential, rather than just an interesting pastime. These individuals began to place restrictions on the software they developed, so that it could not be legally shared; instead, each person who wanted to use the software was supposed to purchase a copy of it. Eventually the terminology of purchasing software evolved into the concept of licensing software. The difference between purchasing and licensing is that purchasing is permanent—once you buy the software, you may own it forever; whereas licensing is temporary, and can be revoked by the seller under certain conditions. Commercial software, based on licensing agreements, has grown into a multibillion dollar industry, and has launched many of the largest companies in the world (Georgopoulou, 2009).

The open-source software movement in many ways emerged as a response to the expansion of the commercial software market, as well as a revival of the original ethos of computer hobbyists. It is based on the belief that knowledge exists to be shared, rather than to be closely guarded and revealed only to those who can pay the seller's price. In its most common form, open-source software can be used at no cost, but under the condition that if one modifies it to improve it or adapt it for a new purpose, then the new version of the software must also be available at no cost. This condition exists to prevent a situation where a developer seeks to profit from open-source software by modifies it slightly and then guarding the modifications as a trade secret. Selling modified open-source software is perfectly acceptable, as long as the software code is also made available for free.

Software exists in more than one form. Usually, a piece of software will at least have two manifestations: source code and application. The source code is what the programmer writes. It is basically a long list of instructions that a human being writes in a programming language, which is typically a simplified form of English that allows the programmer to describe different types of variables and actions. The application is created when the source code is compiled by a program known as a compiler, which takes the source code and translates it into machine language that a computer can process. Source code is in a form that a human being can sit down and read, though doing so would be tedious to say the least. An application, on the other hand, is in a form that the computer can understand but that a human, with few exceptions, cannot. Most computer users purchase applications that have been compiled from source code prior to being sold; the average user would not be able to do anything with the source code, because a high level of familiarity with technology and programming is necessary to run the source code through a compiler (Ensmenger, 2004).

The distinction between source code and application is pertinent because without it, it is difficult to understand why or how a company could become sustainable selling open-source software—surely people would not pay for something that is available for free. Open-source software companies do exactly what the open-source license allows them to do: They take open-source code, modify it for a special purpose, compile it into executable applications, and then sell the applications while also making their modified code available for free. The typical user would have no use for the source code, not having the expertise to do anything with it, but would pay for an application that answers a need. In recent years, some of the best-known open-source software companies have been vendors of the open-source operating system software called Linux. Organizations including RedHat, SuSE, Ubuntu, and Fedora produce their own distributions of Linux, and then sell applications, servers, and support services. They make their source code available, but because using it is beyond the ability of the average user, there is still demand for the organizations' products (Thankachan & Moore, 2017).

Further Insights

Some have accused the open-source software movement of being opposed to capitalism and the idea of profit as motivator for the pursuit of excellence. These critics feel that open-source software is intended to strike a blow to the free market. While there may be some individuals within the open-source software movement that hold such views, these attitudes are far from being prevalent, and there are actually a number of other more pragmatic reasons that inspire programmers to undertake open-source projects. The foremost of these is the notion of computer security. For many years the news has been full of stories about hackers breaking into banks, credit card companies, government agencies, and many other types of organizations, for a variety of reasons including prestige, profit, and even to relieve boredom. A whole industry of commercial computer security software and hardware has emerged in order to combat these hackers. Given this context, one might assume that open-source software could not hope to contribute to the security discussion; after all, software that has its source code freely available would seem to be incredibly vulnerable to hacking, since malicious individuals could pore over the source code to find weak spots they could exploit in order to gain access to an application or database. Actually, nothing could be farther from the truth; some of the most secure and reliable software that has ever been created has come out of the open-source software movement (Carillo, Huff & Chawner, 2017).

The reason for this is that open-source software is based on collaboration. Open-source software, ironically, is actually more safe from hackers because it is not hidden (Depoorter, 2015). Because the code is available to anyone in the world, people with vastly different backgrounds and levels of experience can examine it, test it, and not only discover vulnerabilities but also identify ways of fixing those vulnerabilities. Within the open-source community, being able to do this is a major source of status, because it demonstrates one's expertise and one's generosity of spirit, at the same time. It tells the rest of the community that one is both intelligent enough to find ways of improving the software and willing to lend a hand to help others by sharing the knowledge. In contrast, commercial vendors of security software must keep their source code a closely guarded secret, for fear that their competitors might get a hold of their code and use it to create a better product that could put them out of business (Stevens, 2015). They must also work with relatively small numbers of employees and finite resources and budgets. The open-source community, on the other hand, is vast and diverse in its abilities and contributions. For every open-source developer that can only contribute an hour or two per week, there are a handful of others who are willing and able to drop everything and work for days on end, without food or sleep, to fix an issue that arises with the code—not for a salary, but simply to produce a result that is better than what is currently available. The end result of so many people all over the world constantly testing, modifying, and retesting open-source software is generally to make it more secure than its commercial counterparts. This phenomenon has sometimes been described with the phrase "security through obscurity," meaning that most of commercial software's security comes from the fact that its source code is hidden and inaccessible to those who might want to read through it to find vulnerabilities, rather than from robust design.

The open-source software movement has been lauded not only for its security benefits, but also for its egalitarian spirit. The same mechanisms that inspire the movement's members to make the software more secure also inspire them to make it more efficient. A piece of software that functions well but takes thirty milliseconds of processing time might be analyzed thoroughly and ultimately rewritten from the ground up, to produce a new program that accomplishes the same result in twenty milliseconds. This difference seems minute, but if one considers that there may be hundred of improvements like this one made to even the simplest program, their cumulative effect can be significant. The overall result of this aspect of open-source software is that it tends to be far more efficient than commercial versions, and this in turn means that it can run on older computers with less sophisticated hardware. In contrast, commercial software tends to significantly increase its hardware requirements each time an improved version is released, so that consumers must purchase new hardware or completely new computers if they wish to be able to run the latest version. The open-source software movement prizes efficiency as much as it does security, so it is not unusual for open-source applications to be usable on computers that almost qualify as antiques (Bradley, 2005).

Issues

There was a time when the open-source software movement was known instead as the free software movement. The reason for the name change was that the notion of free software, or "freeware," created considerable confusion among consumers and market analysts. Many people to whom the concept of free software was new had difficulty understanding that while the software is freely available, this does not mean that one can receive a free set of discs containing the software, or free customer support for using the software. The confusion was summarized with the phrase, "free as in freedom, not free as in beer." This refers to the fact that open-source software is free in principle, because the source code is open to all, but not free in the sense of a free product that someone is giving away. While it is certainly possible to download the source code for free, compile it into an executable application, and then use the application, doing so is beyond most users' abilities (Breach, 2008).

Some organizations have encountered difficulty in their attempts to use open-source software as a means of reducing costs. While it is true that it is generally possible to spend less on open-source software because of the lack of licensing fees compared with commercial software, many decision-makers misunderstand the concept of open-source, thinking that it will involve no costs whatsoever. The reality is that some costs will exist regardless of whether one uses open-source or closed-source software, such as support fees, training costs, and so forth. In addition, it has often been said that what open-source software lacks in licensing costs it makes up for in complexity, particularly when one considers system implementation, configuration, and maintenance. Put another way, open source software can be much more challenging to set up, use, and to fix when something goes wrong.

The range of challenges is sometimes attributable to the fact that some open-source software may lack an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI), or a GUI at all, and rely instead on the use of commands entered into a text-based terminal. Using a command line interface is generally more efficient and requires less in the way of computing power, but it requires the user to have a thorough knowledge of commands and parameters for entering them. It is not unusual for an organization to be unable to use open-source software because its staff do not have the requisite technical knowledge necessary to take advantage of it and keep it running. This technical knowledge is therefore a kind of hidden cost to using the software; indeed, part of the reason commercial software companies are able to charge the prices they do is because they offer the convenience of not having to have the knowledge of a programmer in order to make use of the software.

Many people who have heard about open-source software may find the subject mildly diverting, but not enough for them to consider exploring source code and how it works; for them, open-source software is interesting on an intellectual level but they would never consider using it themselves. Ironically, almost everyone uses open-source software every time they turn on a computer or browse the Internet, but they are unaware of it. This is because many of the programs that compose the infrastructure of computer operating systems and the Internet are open-source, such as the Apache web server, which is used by almost half of the Internet's servers. One of the first Internet browsers ever developed, Netscape, was likewise a piece of open-source software.

Bibliography

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