Why Open Source Software?

Open source software development is quite different from conventional closed source software development. Closed source software companies for example, let’s assume a fictional company by the name Microsucks, which follows a closed source approach to development and SourceGorge, which follows, ahem, the OSS law…

Let’s take planet Aireonus Quintalli’s largest software industry, Microsucks and analyze its way to go gold. Microsucks, hires a bunch of ‘countable’ developers to create the best looking operating system codenamed “Short-Antler” to maintain utmost development secrecy just to make sure that no one steals their extremely innovative idea before they patent it. Patent, is one thing that makes a software developer a patient (it vaguely rhymes, so chuckle!) giving him tons of legal work to do for which he is not biologically designed.

Come back to the OSS corp. here, SourceGorge, as the name suggests, it loves to gorge on source codes! (we know it’s a bad joke!) These guys don’t really waste time employing people who work there just for money and nothing else. People working at SourceGorge (hell, the name’s too long, we will call it SG from now on!) i.e SG, have come there out of pure self interest to revolutionize the software industry. And to our surprise, geek population in planet Aireonus Quintalli is relatively large thus incorporating the use of 128-bit processors to count the number of developers there! (get the joke?)

So there we have the developers working in an open environment (they aren’t devoid of privacy!) where they show people how their software’s are coming up not caring about patents and stuff. Remember the OSS fundas in the previous section?, OSS believes that if there is an invention, it can be further improvised if rights to develop it are given to all… thus upbringing creativity, crediting the worthy and delivering the best to the public, who see it all happen in front of their eyes…
That is exactly what SG believes in and then develops its software with constant public support. It’s like cooking in a sizzlers restaurant where the food is cooked right in front of us and we even get to tell the chef the amount of garlic we would love in our noodles…

That’s what we think is the first beautiful feature of OSS, just give a thought to this before reading the next bullet… ;)

Different ways to solve Problems

“Swat the bug!”, cries a developer at Microsucks who is not getting a part of the secretive “Short-Antler” platform to work. The speech recognition system is not able to decipher the advanced and highly cryptic language of Aireonus Quintalli and is somewhat converting it into phrases sounding like a primitive language in another galaxy called English… The reason being was an extra semi-colon in the source code.
Developers at Microsucks were clueless about how to get this important system component to work. They were stuck, they had no choice but to browse through the 537,397,465 pages of source code used to make the program. Bugs can be as small as a huge logical error to as small as an extra punctuation mark. However, both the cases can drastically effect system usability and stability. The people at Microsucks were limited in number, and bug swatting algorithms too returned empty handed. The small team had no choice but to read the vast source code meticulously again and again, all by themselves, thus to prevent people from knowing about their secretive “Short-Antler” platform.

Meanwhile, not very far away…
Developers at SourceGorge aren’t able to get their competitive platform to work. A huge logical error would soon result in the fragmentation of their entire system and several years of effort. The entire OSS working community is worried about it. Reading 537,397,465 pages of code isn’t a small job even if done by equal no. of people… But then atlast, a breakthrough, an OSS programmer from a primitive and distant planet called Earth found the error – It was a damned typo, someone replaced the syntax “void” with “voir”…
As Linus’s Law says, "Given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow." He means to say that the more the number of people, the higher the chance of finding and fixing the bug. So bug-swatting is another section where OSS stands different…

Inside This Section

Better for Coders

Better for Users

It had been a long time since the employees of Microsucks started a mutiny against its own company due to severe dissatisfaction after the development department came under a new guy by the name Gay Ozzie, who preached things which (you might guess out by reading his name!) had caused severe unrest in Microsucks.
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Faster development

Oops, we mentioned a line about this in the previous section itself. Anyway, the mongrel finally manages to create his brainchild. He uploaded a downloadable and easy-to-install version of his extension on the Mongrella Flamewolf website. Within a span of about 30 nanoseconds, the new extension hits nearly 2,486,546 downloads backed by tons of comments and praises about the new idea. The mongrel thinks, “Insignificant and trivial idea, eh?”
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Future of Open Source

So where does it all end? How exactly will open source shape our lives leading us to a better tomorrow? It is for certain that with this level of growth and progress, we expect to see open source as the driving force of the software industry in the next few years.
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Is Open Source a thing of the future?

No; Not at all. That’s as bad as saying we don’t have birds flying around. It’s not about having a different perspective here, it’s just a fact. Open source is here. Look around you, look at the browser you’re using, or the mail client you have open, the backend components of the website you’re browsing or maybe even the operating system you might be on.
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Greater Freedom

As told before, SG sees developers in users. Following the movement that ‘rebels’ started in a distant planet Earth and following the guidelines they had set for building OSS, SG still continues its excellence in building better and better stuff for everyone.
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Open Standards

Also known as Open Formats, Open Standards are much more than just a published specification for storing digital content, media or data. It is a key to freedom.
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