My OperaIS OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE REALLY BETTER?
By Jing the Jinxnighthawk49. Wednesday, August 1, 2007 1:25:21 AM
From the Blog of Ali Kazmi: XsRANTS. Ramblings on Technology, Linux, Politics and more... http://www.xsminipac.com/?cat=12
Is Open Source Software Really Better?
Monday, October 2nd, 2006
What is the Open Source hype all about? Nearly every week a seminar in some part of the world is being held on Open Source technologies. Every year (at least the last 2-3) we are confronted with reports which state that certain open source software have increased their market shares at the expense of already established proprietary software.
Is Linux really better than Windows? Is Apache really the better web-server? Does MySQL really have what it takes for a good database engine? Is Open Source going to take over the World?
The word ‘better’ when applied to software is an ambiguous term. In this article the word better will mean: “A Software which has a superior performance, stability and less prone to software bugs coupled with ease of use when compared to it’s equivalents and given that it satisfies user requirements”
Armed with this redefinition of the word ‘better’ we will seek the answers to the questions we posed.
The Origins and Heavyweights of The Open Source Movement
The Open Source movement separated from the Free Software Movement and earned a separate identity in 1998. It’s sole purpose initially was “to act as a marketing strategy for Free Software”. The leaders of the Open Source Movement recognized that the term ‘free’ in the business world is synonymous with ‘free of cost’ where as the term ‘free’ in Free Software meant ‘free as in freedom, not cost’, the word itself was seen as a hurdle for market acceptance of free software. Thus to present free software to the commercial world, the term Open Source was coined in order to avoid the name ambiguity problem.
The Open Source community for large parts is identical to the Free Software Community except for its inclination towards commercialization, whereas, the latter is concerned with ethical reasons for usage of the software. The most renowned Open Source evangelists are Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, and Tim O’Reilly. In order to provide Free Software better marketing. They formed the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to
* promote the pragmatic benefits to the business community, and
* certify free/open source licenses that meet the Open Source Definition.
One of the earliest success of the Open Source movement was On January 22nd, 1998, when Netscape announced that it would open the source code for Netscape Navigator 5.0. Their announcement gave the free/open source software community a great boost in credibility in the eyes of business community.
Open Source Initiative’s evangelism paid off. Following Netscape’s announcement, several additional vendors announced support for Linux, including Oracle, IBM, and Corel. Intel and Netscape invested in RedHat, the largest English language Linux distributor. Novell in a change of business strategy bought the German Linux Distribution SuSE, and various other Linux-related firms including Ximian to make a niche for itself in the Linux World.
Since the founding of OSI, numerous Open Source support organizations have been formed, one of the latest one is the Open Source Development Labs, founded by a consortium consisting of Industry Heavyweights such as IBM, Sun, Intel, Oracle, Corel, Novell, RedHat. The OSDL is the single largest non-profit organization supporting Open Source Development, and is located in Portland, USA. More significantly, many large corporations are now migrating to open source. Earlier this year, the European arm of automobile giant Ford decided to ditch Microsoft as its desktop operating systems provider and move to open source. Likewise in June, the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency announced that it plans to standardize with StarOffice.
What’s different in Open Source software?
As mentioned that the Open Source movement was conceived from the Free Software movement. The Free Software movement itself has its roots in the “hacker” culture of U.S. computer science laboratories (at Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT) in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
This community came to an end per se in the 1980s when commercial companies hired away most of the staff in the U.S. computer science laboratories. The companies protected their source code with special ‘non-disclosure agreements’ where the programmers didn’t own their code but the company owned it and they were obliged to not discuss or show it to anyone.
Richard Stallman, a programmer at the MIT’s AI-Lab, revolted against this new-order which had destroyed the hacker-culture, by starting the GNU project whose aim was to produce a “Free” Operating System. The GNU project reinvigorated the hacker-culture, an they became united in Stallman’s pursuit.
The GNU project spawned an entire software development methodology based on hacker ethics:
The community of programmers was closely-knitted. Code passed back and forth between the members of the community–if you made an improvement you were expected to submit your code to the community of developers. To withhold code was considered gauche–after all, you benefited from the work of your friends, you should return the favor.
With this methodology an entire Operating System, and it’s accompanying application was built that operating system is called GNU/Linux. After the successful development of the operating system, an entire new array of application dawned. Open Source scripting languages like PERL, PHP were built, Open Source Web-server known as Apache was built, Database Suites, security tools, desktop multimedia applications etc.
Currently Open Source has a respectable and vast array of software to offer, and most of it at virtually no cost, but is it really better?
Yes and no, most people think!
Yes, because of the particular way these software are developed, where a multitude of people have access to the source code, and multiple programmers are contributing. Very few software companies can attract such a pool of talent as a single open source project can. In Sourceforge.net, the largest repository of Free/Open Source software, the average number of developers per application is 10, but the big open source applications such as the Linux kernel, Apache, MySQL have more than hundreds of people working on them.
Because of cooperation between working developers the time to release the software is reduced, bugs are spotted by end-users. It’s a way that many individuals can collaborate on a product that none of them could achieve alone. It’s the rapid bug-fixes and the changes that the user asks for, done to the user’s own schedule. Another benefit of open source software is that the software can be customized by the user according to his or her requirements as the source code is freely available and there is no restriction in changing it and customizing for oneself.
Proprietary software such as the ones developed by Microsoft allow access to source code to only a few programmer which have exclusive rights to develop, maintain and debug the software. Source code of the software is thus hidden from the users and the users only receive the executable binaries. These software are generally general-purpose to achieve the maximum user-base, and thus are not customized for individual requirements, this leads to the user adjusting himself to the software instead of adjusting the software to his requirements, which is impractical in some cases.
Open source development methodology also leads to a more reliable software. Whereas, proprietary software are released only to a minor community of pre-selected beta testers, open source software are tested by thousands and thousands of people before a concrete version is released, often open source development cycles produce software at speeds that even software giants face difficulty compete with.
The open-source model also means increased security; because code is in the public view it will be exposed to extreme scrutiny, with problems being found and fixed instead of being kept secret until the wrong person discovers them. Thus this leads to a more reliable software.
However the problem with most of open source software is that it’s not easy to use, most open source software was made for fellow ‘hackers’ not for the normal user as a consequence generally higher level of technical knowledge required to install and maintain open source software. This is certainly an obstacle to wider adoption of open source software. However, distributors like Red Hat and Mandrake, have begun to offer user-friendly shrink-wrapped installations of Linux. But users who migrate to open source applications still face a steep learning curve.
For this reason, the implementation of open source solutions today tends to be restricted to infrastructure and other “invisible” applications such as servers, where techies are responsible for their installation and management. Currently, for instance, around 60 percent of the world’s Web sites run on Apache.
Open source software also have terrible user documentations. A couple of years ago only sources of applications where available with little, if any, installations instructions. This situation was a consequence of the fact that only technical people use the software, thus developers rarely cared for documentation. Now fortunately the situation has improved. The Linux Documentation Project is a project dedicated to produce How-Tos, FAQs and Tutorials for users of Linux systems, covering topics has diverse as Artificial Intelligence programming in Linux on how to upgrade your Hard Disk. Open source developers now often maintain ‘wikis’ (which resemble blogging sites) where user of the software make contributions and these wikis act as a knowledge base for users of the software, often these wikis take the role of user-documentation.
Another major problem with open source software is that since their source codes are freely available, proprietary software companies can study the methods used and if they find a method which has already been ‘patented’, they can pursue legal action against the project. This often leads to destruction of the entire project, since no one takes responsibility. Software patents are a serious issue and are adversely affecting software development across the world.
However help on this front is on the way. Bruce Perens, open source evangelist and leader of the famous Debi, a GNU/Linux distribution, founded the Open Source Securities which sells legal protection to users (mostly mid-level companies) of open source software.
So does open Source software qualify for the “better software title”? Depends for whom you are answering! Although open source software matches most of the criteria we set, it still misses somewhat the mark when it comes to usage, which mainly affects the desktop users, however the technical users may regard open source software as the superior platform, that’s why desktop users have been so far shy to adopt open source software whereas technical ones are porting to open source in droves. However since usage is improving with the advent of GUI environments for Linux, and graphical front ends to nearly every open source program, we can say that open source software are improving to match their proprietary counterparts especially on desktop, whereas in the back-office, open source technology has mostly already taken over.
The Future of Open Source
Although Open source software is considered to be more secure and less vulnerable to the many viruses now circulating on the Internet, this is not the reason why everyone is porting to Open Source: The most compelling feature is that, although there may be some distribution and setup costs, open source software is essentially free, Open Source is a way to avoid millions of license costs which would come with proprietary software deployment.
The ultimate test of open source will, doubtlessly, lie in its ability to become more user-friendly and to capture the desktop user market. But this will be an uphill struggle. Today Microsoft has a 95-percent monopoly of the PC operating system market, a 96-percent share of the office applications suite business, and an 84-percent share of the browser market.
On the positive side, there are new GUI-like desktop environments available for Linux PCs, including KDE and GNOME. And Microsoft’s competitors are working hard to provide open source alternatives to mainstream applications, such as OpenOffice, which is derived from Sun’s StarOffice and is emerging as an open source competition to Microsoft Office. There are also Linux versions of Netscape browser, and its celebrated derivative, FireFox.
Resources:
Open Source Initiative
http://www.osi.org
Free Software Foundation
http://www.fsf.org
Open Source Development Labs
http://www.osdl.org
GNU Project
http://www.gnu.org
Linux Documentation Project
http://www.tldp.org
Is Open Source Software Really Better?
Monday, October 2nd, 2006
What is the Open Source hype all about? Nearly every week a seminar in some part of the world is being held on Open Source technologies. Every year (at least the last 2-3) we are confronted with reports which state that certain open source software have increased their market shares at the expense of already established proprietary software.
Is Linux really better than Windows? Is Apache really the better web-server? Does MySQL really have what it takes for a good database engine? Is Open Source going to take over the World?
The word ‘better’ when applied to software is an ambiguous term. In this article the word better will mean: “A Software which has a superior performance, stability and less prone to software bugs coupled with ease of use when compared to it’s equivalents and given that it satisfies user requirements”
Armed with this redefinition of the word ‘better’ we will seek the answers to the questions we posed.
The Origins and Heavyweights of The Open Source Movement
The Open Source movement separated from the Free Software Movement and earned a separate identity in 1998. It’s sole purpose initially was “to act as a marketing strategy for Free Software”. The leaders of the Open Source Movement recognized that the term ‘free’ in the business world is synonymous with ‘free of cost’ where as the term ‘free’ in Free Software meant ‘free as in freedom, not cost’, the word itself was seen as a hurdle for market acceptance of free software. Thus to present free software to the commercial world, the term Open Source was coined in order to avoid the name ambiguity problem.
The Open Source community for large parts is identical to the Free Software Community except for its inclination towards commercialization, whereas, the latter is concerned with ethical reasons for usage of the software. The most renowned Open Source evangelists are Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, and Tim O’Reilly. In order to provide Free Software better marketing. They formed the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to
* promote the pragmatic benefits to the business community, and
* certify free/open source licenses that meet the Open Source Definition.
One of the earliest success of the Open Source movement was On January 22nd, 1998, when Netscape announced that it would open the source code for Netscape Navigator 5.0. Their announcement gave the free/open source software community a great boost in credibility in the eyes of business community.
Open Source Initiative’s evangelism paid off. Following Netscape’s announcement, several additional vendors announced support for Linux, including Oracle, IBM, and Corel. Intel and Netscape invested in RedHat, the largest English language Linux distributor. Novell in a change of business strategy bought the German Linux Distribution SuSE, and various other Linux-related firms including Ximian to make a niche for itself in the Linux World.
Since the founding of OSI, numerous Open Source support organizations have been formed, one of the latest one is the Open Source Development Labs, founded by a consortium consisting of Industry Heavyweights such as IBM, Sun, Intel, Oracle, Corel, Novell, RedHat. The OSDL is the single largest non-profit organization supporting Open Source Development, and is located in Portland, USA. More significantly, many large corporations are now migrating to open source. Earlier this year, the European arm of automobile giant Ford decided to ditch Microsoft as its desktop operating systems provider and move to open source. Likewise in June, the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency announced that it plans to standardize with StarOffice.
What’s different in Open Source software?
As mentioned that the Open Source movement was conceived from the Free Software movement. The Free Software movement itself has its roots in the “hacker” culture of U.S. computer science laboratories (at Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT) in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
This community came to an end per se in the 1980s when commercial companies hired away most of the staff in the U.S. computer science laboratories. The companies protected their source code with special ‘non-disclosure agreements’ where the programmers didn’t own their code but the company owned it and they were obliged to not discuss or show it to anyone.
Richard Stallman, a programmer at the MIT’s AI-Lab, revolted against this new-order which had destroyed the hacker-culture, by starting the GNU project whose aim was to produce a “Free” Operating System. The GNU project reinvigorated the hacker-culture, an they became united in Stallman’s pursuit.
The GNU project spawned an entire software development methodology based on hacker ethics:
The community of programmers was closely-knitted. Code passed back and forth between the members of the community–if you made an improvement you were expected to submit your code to the community of developers. To withhold code was considered gauche–after all, you benefited from the work of your friends, you should return the favor.
With this methodology an entire Operating System, and it’s accompanying application was built that operating system is called GNU/Linux. After the successful development of the operating system, an entire new array of application dawned. Open Source scripting languages like PERL, PHP were built, Open Source Web-server known as Apache was built, Database Suites, security tools, desktop multimedia applications etc.
Currently Open Source has a respectable and vast array of software to offer, and most of it at virtually no cost, but is it really better?
Yes and no, most people think!
Yes, because of the particular way these software are developed, where a multitude of people have access to the source code, and multiple programmers are contributing. Very few software companies can attract such a pool of talent as a single open source project can. In Sourceforge.net, the largest repository of Free/Open Source software, the average number of developers per application is 10, but the big open source applications such as the Linux kernel, Apache, MySQL have more than hundreds of people working on them.
Because of cooperation between working developers the time to release the software is reduced, bugs are spotted by end-users. It’s a way that many individuals can collaborate on a product that none of them could achieve alone. It’s the rapid bug-fixes and the changes that the user asks for, done to the user’s own schedule. Another benefit of open source software is that the software can be customized by the user according to his or her requirements as the source code is freely available and there is no restriction in changing it and customizing for oneself.
Proprietary software such as the ones developed by Microsoft allow access to source code to only a few programmer which have exclusive rights to develop, maintain and debug the software. Source code of the software is thus hidden from the users and the users only receive the executable binaries. These software are generally general-purpose to achieve the maximum user-base, and thus are not customized for individual requirements, this leads to the user adjusting himself to the software instead of adjusting the software to his requirements, which is impractical in some cases.
Open source development methodology also leads to a more reliable software. Whereas, proprietary software are released only to a minor community of pre-selected beta testers, open source software are tested by thousands and thousands of people before a concrete version is released, often open source development cycles produce software at speeds that even software giants face difficulty compete with.
The open-source model also means increased security; because code is in the public view it will be exposed to extreme scrutiny, with problems being found and fixed instead of being kept secret until the wrong person discovers them. Thus this leads to a more reliable software.
However the problem with most of open source software is that it’s not easy to use, most open source software was made for fellow ‘hackers’ not for the normal user as a consequence generally higher level of technical knowledge required to install and maintain open source software. This is certainly an obstacle to wider adoption of open source software. However, distributors like Red Hat and Mandrake, have begun to offer user-friendly shrink-wrapped installations of Linux. But users who migrate to open source applications still face a steep learning curve.
For this reason, the implementation of open source solutions today tends to be restricted to infrastructure and other “invisible” applications such as servers, where techies are responsible for their installation and management. Currently, for instance, around 60 percent of the world’s Web sites run on Apache.
Open source software also have terrible user documentations. A couple of years ago only sources of applications where available with little, if any, installations instructions. This situation was a consequence of the fact that only technical people use the software, thus developers rarely cared for documentation. Now fortunately the situation has improved. The Linux Documentation Project is a project dedicated to produce How-Tos, FAQs and Tutorials for users of Linux systems, covering topics has diverse as Artificial Intelligence programming in Linux on how to upgrade your Hard Disk. Open source developers now often maintain ‘wikis’ (which resemble blogging sites) where user of the software make contributions and these wikis act as a knowledge base for users of the software, often these wikis take the role of user-documentation.
Another major problem with open source software is that since their source codes are freely available, proprietary software companies can study the methods used and if they find a method which has already been ‘patented’, they can pursue legal action against the project. This often leads to destruction of the entire project, since no one takes responsibility. Software patents are a serious issue and are adversely affecting software development across the world.
However help on this front is on the way. Bruce Perens, open source evangelist and leader of the famous Debi, a GNU/Linux distribution, founded the Open Source Securities which sells legal protection to users (mostly mid-level companies) of open source software.
So does open Source software qualify for the “better software title”? Depends for whom you are answering! Although open source software matches most of the criteria we set, it still misses somewhat the mark when it comes to usage, which mainly affects the desktop users, however the technical users may regard open source software as the superior platform, that’s why desktop users have been so far shy to adopt open source software whereas technical ones are porting to open source in droves. However since usage is improving with the advent of GUI environments for Linux, and graphical front ends to nearly every open source program, we can say that open source software are improving to match their proprietary counterparts especially on desktop, whereas in the back-office, open source technology has mostly already taken over.
The Future of Open Source
Although Open source software is considered to be more secure and less vulnerable to the many viruses now circulating on the Internet, this is not the reason why everyone is porting to Open Source: The most compelling feature is that, although there may be some distribution and setup costs, open source software is essentially free, Open Source is a way to avoid millions of license costs which would come with proprietary software deployment.
The ultimate test of open source will, doubtlessly, lie in its ability to become more user-friendly and to capture the desktop user market. But this will be an uphill struggle. Today Microsoft has a 95-percent monopoly of the PC operating system market, a 96-percent share of the office applications suite business, and an 84-percent share of the browser market.
On the positive side, there are new GUI-like desktop environments available for Linux PCs, including KDE and GNOME. And Microsoft’s competitors are working hard to provide open source alternatives to mainstream applications, such as OpenOffice, which is derived from Sun’s StarOffice and is emerging as an open source competition to Microsoft Office. There are also Linux versions of Netscape browser, and its celebrated derivative, FireFox.
Resources:
Open Source Initiative
http://www.osi.org
Free Software Foundation
http://www.fsf.org
Open Source Development Labs
http://www.osdl.org
GNU Project
http://www.gnu.org
Linux Documentation Project
http://www.tldp.org
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