I'm sure you've heard the expression "you get what you pay for," but in the tech world this is not always the case. Many products, such as Apple computers, are significantly overpriced for what they are while on the flip side there is a huge community of software developers putting out free software that is as good or almost as good as paid alternatives.
Open source software is a major category of free software and a growing trend within the development community. Not all free software is open source, but a large amount of it is. Open source refers to the source code of the software being available for download as well as the software and this enables both collaboration on a massive scale where developers all work together to update and maintain the software as well as using it as a basis for other similar software or as a component within larger software applications.
Open source software is not only good for getting decent software for free, but also a great way to contribute as a developer and get one's name out in the development community. Open source projects can be great items to add to one's resume as well and is seen by many as a way to give back to the software community. There are many that swear by it and would prefer that all software be open source.
While open source software is a great resource, however, it also lacks consciousness as a framework of certain realities, namely that economics is intertwined with the modern world. As such it could never become the sole archetype of software distribution. The harsh truth is that the world operates on money and in the end people need to make money to survive. This is why despite the huge surge of open source software projects being brought to the internet, software companies remain profitable for the most part. There is a lot of useful things that are open source, but in the end the best things are not free. In all likelihood, the majority of contributors to open source projects do so in their spare time from working jobs for profiting companies. This by no means prevents open source from future growth, but rather just prevents it from becoming universal within the development community. Unless of course developers plan on working at fast food restaurants during the day and coding open source projects all night.
I agree with you that the saying "You get what you pay for" is not really true when it comes to software. However, not every user is a programmer. Therefore, the saying still holds in some degree. You have a great understanding about open source software and its importance to users as well as developers. Your post is very interesting as it mentioned about the dilemma of software developers contribute to open source software. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post because it is very well articulated and easily readable. You brought up great reasons for the lack of open source software by dwelling into the money aspect. Would you rather make software that gets you money or one that doesn't? And even if you would rather make free software you would lack the advertising that the major corporations have. TO get open source software you have to know where to find it.
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ReplyDeleteOver all very Nice article. I like the way you compared Apple product with open source project.Today world is all about marketing. It depends how well you market your product. Open source product lacks marketing. The key people involved in open source project are developer.They try to improve the quality of the software but they do not know how to market the product. Trust is the other think where open source software lacks.When People paid money for the product they know whom they contact when they run into trouble but for open source developers are not bound to solve the problem. No one take responsibility when open source software fails.
ReplyDeleteOne small suggestion is to use Justify option for text alignment.