Over the last year or so I’ve been trying out Open Source Software. Basically, Open Source Software is distributed under a license which makes freely available the code (programming) so that others may contribute to, further develop and improve its functionality.
There are bonuses for us non-geeks, too. Open source material is quite often free or available very cheaply and quite often the multi-user license deals are extremely generous. Probably the best known example here is the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Another highly desirable feature of Open Source is the way in which security is built into the source as the program as its developed, rather than as an afterthought as is often the case with proprietary products.
So what’s the catch? Well, certainly Open Source material is often less-polished than it’s proprietary equivalents and its development is dependant upon the likes of us to report bugs to the developers involved.
However, Open Source Software has moved on considerably and just about everyone with an internet connection will have come across it in some guise or another. The Mozilla Firefox browser, Apache Server Software, MySQL database, and php are just a few examples of Open Source applications.
