Open source software Report

by Christian Gittings

1 Introduction

This report set out to find out about open source and how it impacts the software
market

2 What is open source?

According to the Wikipedia encyclopaedia found at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source last accessed 10/01/06

“Open source describes the general practises in production and development

which promote access to the end product's sources, the term open source
has become widely adopted since the internet‟s early years”.

Since the 1960s software was developed as open source products, but they had to
stop as the software became less standardisd so software could not talk to one
another and now open source is beginning to enjoy a new lest of life

Paul B. de Laat writing on the De Montfort university’s Centre for computer and social
responsibility (ccsr) website:- Open Source Software: A Case of Swift Trust?
http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/conferences/ethicomp/ethicomp2004/abstracts/45.ht
mllast accessed 10/01/06 this is what the author says this about the subject of
freedom and open source software

“The so-called `open source software movement' enjoyed a huge increase in

popularity over the last decade. The movement has multiplied in scale. This
holds for both `output' - software in source code form to be used freely by

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 anyone, and `process' - networks of thousands of volunteer hackers working
together. Famous examples include hackers developing Linux, Apache, and
OpenOffice. This development is, of course, mainly the result of the creation
of the Internet; participants now have immediate access to each other, and
downloading code is a matter of minutes only.”

Open source also in many peoples view promotes freedom to use and change the
software as they will because as already mentioned when you get open source
software you also get the source code, people can also redistribute the software as
they like without infringing conventional software licences.

Below taken from Open Source Software Development: An Overview By Ming-Wei

Wu and Ying-Dar Lin is the process in which open source software goes through in
its lifetime

Andrzej Kocikowski writing on the De Montfort university’s Centre for computer and
social responsibility (ccsr) website:- Operation "Open Source" -- A Challenge for
Governments and Citizens of the Information Society
http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/conferences/ethicomp/ethicomp2004/abstracts/90.ht
ml last accessed 10/01/06 this is what the author says this about the subject of
freedom and open source software

“Control over the global information infrastructure should not rest with any
monopoly. Open source software is the only reasonable alternative to any
software source that -- with the help of trade secrets or intellectual property
ownership -- tries to dominate the global market (and also our PCs!) thereby
threatening freedom and democracy.”

But they is some confusion in many people eyes about what open source software
really is and culture has risen that can not see the benefits of open source software
the Global Information and Communication Technologies Department has done lots
of work on the subject and say this on its website http://www.infodev.org last
accessed 10/01/06

“Largely because a confusion is often made between OSS and „free

software‟, the debate about the respective merits of existing commercial

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 solutions (proprietary software and operating systems) on one hand and
those of OSS on the other has often been clouded by controversy. For
developing countries and their enterprises, such confusion and controversy
have been less than helpful. Today‟s reality is that users have a choice
between many possible solutions to best satisfy their computing and
networking needs. The more they know about the relative merits and possible
limitations of such solutions, the likelier they will be to make the choices best
adapted to their respective situations.”

And is seen by many people as a better system as the software evolves by people
changing, fixing bugs and adapting the software for the job in hand and not just
buying software with parts you may not use in the lifetime of the software which is
seen by many people as a waste of money, also as many people are looking at the
software besides the authors it can speed up the development of the software.

It can also according to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) a non-profit organization
promoting open source as the way to go, “produce better software”.

3 The market War

Open source software can be seen as a treat to the conventional software market as
some of the software that is seen as open source such as open office can be found
free on the internet and do the same job as Microsoft office and even read files from
this package with no problem

Paul B. de Laat writing on the De Montfort university’s Centre for computer and social
responsibility (ccsr) website:- Open Source Networks In Industry
http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/conferences/ethicomp/ethicomp2002/abstracts/37.ht
ml last accessed 10/01/06 this is what the author says this about the open source
market

“The open source software movement has grown into a threat for corporate
software development.”

And then goes on to say

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 “It is argued that they have opened up several new kinds of networks that
apply open source principles. Unavoidably, these developments touch upon
ethical questions. On the one hand, the clash of corporate and hacker work
(open source) cultures does not turn out to be necessarily counterproductive.
On the other, the principles of open source as a movement can be seen to
come under severe strain”

But as author says “the clash of corporate and hacker work (open source) cultures
does not turn out to be necessarily counterproductive” the author still sees the need
for both kinds of software, as open source is voluntary, but authors can still make
money from their software if they wish and corporate is paid we need corporate
software to pay for open source as the same programmers can work on both.

Another champion of open source Open Source Initiative (OSI) in its rules for open
source says this on its web site http://www.opensource.org/ last access 10/01/06

“The open source license must not place restrictions on other software that is
distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must
not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be
open-source software.”

So it to can see the need for both corporate or open source in only difference is what
they do with knowledge, in the terms of Nonaka theory of knowledge, open source
choose to share their knowledge to make the software better, but with the help of
trade secrets or intellectual property ownership corporate choose to hold on to their
knowledge in the long run its better for software houses to do both as we will have
better software out of them.

The below model called the The Teece model Taken from Innovation Management
(2nd Ed) by A Afuah can explain the difference between open source and corporate.

Open source believe their assets and knowledge, source code in this case as freely
available and they don’t mind passing it on because as said before freely available
source code can produce better software, on the other hand corporate assets are

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hold tight and are not aloud to be freely available, even the software you buy still
belongs to the software house you only buy the right to use the software not the
software it self, so software seems the only goods you buy the right to use the
product not the product itself which to a lot of people seems very odd, just think if car
companies did the same by saying you are not buying the car you are only buying
the right to use the car, I think people would soon complain so it seems odd that
people don’t complain about software, it also makes the software market hard to
break into.

Also different is the way they market the software corporate go for expensive adverts
in magazines and on television while open source software choose to market their
software in a less expensive way by having their software put on cover mounted
discs and put it on the internet so people can down loaded on use

But it is very hard to push big firms like Microsoft off its pedestal unless you use
drastic measures and other firms have tried and failed because Microsoft has the
monopoly as to What goes on the personal computer most computers come with
windows.

4 Conclusion

While there is companies like Microsoft who have an monopoly on the software
market there will always be open source software trying to stop them as open source
stands for the freedom to choose what software you have on your computer and
what you can do with it.

We will always have the big firms like Microsoft and I don’t think we can do any thing
with them while they continue to put Windows on to every computer built so the
answers seems to be if you want a choice build the computer yourself or put linux
on your machine

open source is a good thing as its cheap or free compared with expensive
models

5 Reference and Further reading

Wikipedia encyclopaedia
(WWW)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
Last access 10/01/06

Open Source Initiative (OSI)

(WWW)
http://www.opensource.org/
Last accessed 10/01/06

De Montfort University Centre for Computer and social responsibility

(WWW)
http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk:-
http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/conferences/ethicomp/ethicomp2004/abstracts/90.ht
ml

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http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/conferences/ethicomp/ethicomp2002/abstracts/37.ht
ml
http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/conferences/ethicomp/ethicomp2004/abstracts/45.ht
ml
Last accessed 10/01/06

Global Information and Communication Technologies Department

(WWW)
http://www.infodev.org
Last accessed 10/01/06

Innovation Management and new product development (Third Edition)

By Paul Trott
Published by Prentice hall 2005

Open Source Software Development: An Overview

By Ming-Wei Wu and Ying-Dar Lin
Published by National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan 2001

Innovation Management (2nd Ed)

By A Afuah, Published by Oxford 2003

(Photographs used in this report unless already stated are from the focus 10,000
photos CD-ROM)

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