Open source refers to any program whose source code is made available for use or modification as users or developers see fit. Open source software is usually developed as a result of a collaborative effort and is freely available. In short, open source software must ensure that:
- The software, if distributed, must be available for everyone without any restriction.
- The source code must be made available.
- The licensing allows improved versions of the software to carry a different name or version.
For many years, industry giants like Microsoft built their billion dollar empires providing proprietary software that depend on extending the capabilities of developers and users. Over the past few years, the new development paradigm of open source evolved, which involved developers in different locations and organizations sharing code to develop software. With the widespread use of the Internet, the number of open source software developers swelled and thus formed various open source communities.
Evolution of Open Source
Richard Stallman, an employee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), became involved with open source software in 1971. In the early days, user groups included the SHARE group for IBM 701 and the DECUS group for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). At that time, operating systems (such as UNIX) provided academics and researchers a template for their work.
In 1983, Richard Stallman launched the GNU project to develop an OS with the source code available to the public. Soon after the project, he coined the phrase "free software" and founded the Free Software Foundation.
The Linux Kernel, developed by Linus Torvalds, was released as source code in 1991. When Stallman and his team integrated the Linux code with their work, the first free OS was born. The software created from this code union, commonly known as Linux or GNU/Linux, is still available today.
In 1993, both GNU/Linux and 386BSD were reasonably stable platforms. Since then, 386BSD has evolved into a family of BSD based operating systems (NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD). The Linux Kernel is still evolving and is being used in many variants like Debian, Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake and Ubuntu.
Over the years, many open source products have developed a niche in the industry and have been well accepted in many organizations. Some of the popular products in use today are Apache, Perl, MySQL, GNOME, KDE and Mozilla. Companies of all shapes and sizes are exploring new economic models to succeed in the highly competitive software market. Emerging markets like Russia, India, Mexico and China have embraced open source and the scope has widened to social networking and Web2.0.