Research Paper - Open Source Software

[DECwakeboarder]

Anyone have any numbers or ideas about the benefits to using open source software over proprietary? My English teacher told me to write on a topic that interests me, so I will!

 

 

And hello again all, I haven't been around much lately...not a whole lot interesting going on in the computer world sadly.

[Silverfox]

well the first advantage is in the title: open source! it's available to all to give their input for a start and there is no intellectual property, meaning it really is shared. it also means that the approaches to a project are subject to a narrow-minded individual affair with much more input to get the right angle.

 

that should get you going...lol...

[Verran]

I'm not really sure what you're looking for, but I will say this:

 

While enthusiasts are generally excited about open-source code, the rest of the people aren't. Open-source generally has less name recognition than its proprietary counterpart, and that often makes uninformed users less eager to learn it. On top of that, a lot of people view open-source programs to be less secure than proprietary. This is not always the case, but that doesn't matter because perception is reality in most cases. In my old company, the debate often came down to "Open-Source savings vs. User Willingness To Change". It took a long time to switch to FireFox, but the IT department pushed it and it ended up going well. Thunderbird followed shortly. OpenOffice was still facing a much steeper climb when I left, however.

[Propane]

You could talk about the decline in the use of the Gopher protocol that occured when UofWisconsin decided to make it have a 'real' license. There was a nice little fiasco where people thought that pricing was going to get involved, which caused them to switch to http/ftp protocols. Later UW put Gopher under the open domain, but the damage was already done. There is a nice wikipedia article on it.

[NCC10281982B]

Well.

 

Its free obviously. However, if you are talking about using the SW in an business environment eula's usually have conditions that apply to that. Open office is one example I can think off the top of my head.

 

Being able to re master linux (an example) has a potentially unlimited number of advantages.

 

I recommend reading reviews of open source SW to get a flavor or what others have said.

 

Be careful to include as much info and s many view points as you can. Topics like this can bite you in the butt.

[Fireonice]

To start its free, there are also endless possibilites on how the program can be deigned as most open source programs have forums and other things were users can tell the program designers how they want not just the program designers. Problems with the program are also fixed quicker.

[Propane]

Open source does not mean free.

 

Example: Xchat.

 

It just means that the source MUST be available (so... if you have considerable knowledge about compiling stuff, then yes, it will be free... otherwise you can end up paying)