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Open Source – free dom, not free beer. |
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Written by Tony Phelps
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Thursday, 17 November 2005 |
For the past few years, “open source” software has been sweeping around
the world, growing in popularity and increasing in sophistication and
variety. It is actually much more prevalent than many people realize,
and is something that all computer users should be aware of. It has the
potential to greatly change the way information technology is made
available to people.
Presently, 9 out of 10 computers are sold with Microsoft Windows as the
operating system, and a raft of applications that are built for
Windows. Not only does the computer buyer have to pay for the right to
use this software (and if you ever read a software licence agreement,
you’ll see that you don’t even own what you’ve paid for), but like as
not will have to pay for future enhancements too. And even if you’re
the rare breed of person who is able to re-program software to fix a
particular fault, you wouldn’t be able to since the underlying program
(the source code) is locked away. People have been jailed for
attempting to fix such proprietary software!
In Vanuatu, of course, there isn’t quite as much of this paying going
as Bill Gates, head honcho of Microsoft, would like to see. He is
reportedly quite happy that Windows is being so widely pirated in
China, as that means that they will come to depend on it and Microsoft
can one day clamp down on the piracy and enjoy sudden vast injections
of money. Perhaps he has the same attitude toward Vanuatu!
Nonetheless, the principle is that most people have to pay for the
right to use software that they are not allowed to own, alter or copy.
Enter the “open source” industry. Under a radical new licencing
agreement known as GNU, Linus Torvalds developed an operating system
that anyone could share with anyone else, that anyone with the skills
could fix, improve or add to, and that noone would “own”. In this
sense, the software was free – free as in freedom from ownership, not
free as in no cost. I can take this operating system and sell it to you
(with or without changes), but I cannot prevent you from doing the same
to someone else, and I have to make public any changes I do make.
Because the underlying programming (source code) is open for anyone to
study, such software has become known as “open source”.
Open source software is not just operating systems, and there are now
thousands of open source applications that run on different operating
systems. A great example is OpenOffice (see http://www.openoffice.org),
a full replacement for Microsoft Office that you can have completely
free of charge, and which will run on Windows or Mac as well as Linux.
One day, you may be faced with a bill for Vt80,000 for each computer
that has Microsoft Office – open source software could save you a lot
of money!
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