Open Source Advantage
Before we can talk about the advantages of using open source, it might be good to know what exactly is it? We can deduct from the name that this means that a project's source code is freely available, but it is more than just that.
At its heart, open source is a software license that allows the end user to freely utilize, redistribute, modify, or fork the code as they see fit. Any derived products MUST be released under the same open source license. Discrimination of any person, group, or field of endeavor is prohibited, and the license must be tech neutral.
Large groups of people form groups around software projects, and some projects may have thousands of people who contribute code to the code base (although there will only be a few lead developers to approve and merge the code). Because of this, a wide variety of open source software is available. For more information on open source, visit opensource.org. Below are some reasons people prefer open source:
While Linux software selection was once very limited compared to Windows, this is no longer the case. There is an open source version of just about everything. Often times, the open source version is preferred by the community. This allows one to easily get started without a large software investment up front.
Because of the licensing, and the fact that many open source projects utilize databases, it is often very easy to switch to other software providers in the same space. Companies like to lock customers into their platforms in order to put people onto the cloud, and thus make monthly revenue vs. a one time software sale. The problem with this is that the company is now free to delete features, charge extra, and change terms. You literally do not own the software you are paying for. This is a model most consumers are rejecting for good reason.
With proprietary software, bugs are rarely discovered. When bugs are discovered one of two things happens. If a white hat(IT security professional) found it, they may try to report it to the company. It is not uncommon for companies to ignore these reports, or worse yet, pursue legal action against the person who discovered the bug. But if a black hat (criminal hacker) finds it, the vulnerability could be used to attack systems running that software through a computer virus.
Because open source is open, all bugs are quickly discovered and patched. In addition, you can be positive there are no backdoors, vulnerabilities, or bad code included. The downside to backdoors is that you are purposely introducing a vulnerability. Once discovered, there is no guaranteeing that a third party won't exploit the fault.
Documentation varies from project to project, but if you stick with popular distributions of Linux, and widely used applications, you should have no problem finding help if needed. Installations are normally documented step by step, and there are many forums, videos, and websites on the subject if you get hung up. In addition, help can almost always be obtained by contacting the creators of the software, or through a programming job board if it is popular software.
One of the best parts of open source software is the ability to tailor it to suite your needs. A lot of projects come with APIs, modules, hooks, and other ways of easily extending and enhancing functionality. Of course, you can alway directly modify the source code as well. This allows for a degree of automation and flexibility that was previously only available to enterprise corporations with their own large IT departments and matching budget.
In conclusion, open source software has too many advantages to pass up. This is why you can find open source servers running in every Fortune 500 company's network racks. Home and businesses take advantage of open source software because it is free, stable, secure, customizable, and is well documented... with video tutorials produced and books written in abundance on most software. It is easy to see why open source software's popularity has, and will continue to grow.
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