The adoption of Open Source Software is gaining significant importance in the world today. It is neither a new technology, nor a methodology that will change the way software works, but its ever increasing acceptance and adoption by companies, businesses, governments, software developers, educational institutions, and even students indicates its profound impact in the software community. What started as a small initiative, has hit big time popularity with the likes of Linux, Apache, MySQL becoming great success stories. It has taken us to the level where in anytime you are in need of a particular software, the first thing you do is search in sourceforge.net if we can get something similar which we can directly use or customize.
Open Source software or OSS as its popularly known is governed by the rules of the Open Source Definition and is mostly released under the GNU Public license (GPL).
The advantages of OSS are many but the most prominent one is its simplified license management in terms of usage. This makes it very attractive in spite of the disadvantages like service/support and training/documentation. However off late, there have been major steps taken to fix some of these weak links.
Companies and big corporate bodies are switching to OSS because of the flexibility it provides to them in adding their own features to software and in maintaining them. It also provides a vast ground for software research, which can be taken up without having to invest heavily in terms of reinventing the wheel.
With the giants of the industry like IBM, Sun backing OSS initiatives the future looks exciting for the community. The latest trend increasingly shows that the software community uses OSS as a way for fostering innovation with projects being kicked off in a lot of exciting new technologies. The projects or innovations that were being done as intensive research in organizations are now being implemented in
OSS projects for e.g, virtualization support in Linux Kernel.
Now getting to the context of student community, Open Sourcing of software provides a huge ground to study and involve in the process of creating good software. Several open source-related websites encourage its users to upload source code, download the ones which are being developed for testing, report bugs, etc. It also gives budding software enthusiasts a global arena to expose their software to and gain positive criticism and feedback. OSS provides a good learning platform as you need to download, install, and play around with the software, which is more akin to on-the-job training.
I was quite impressed to see an article about OSS on Wipro’s student blog site, I can say it is pretty encouraging for all the young enthusiats including me, who have got selected into wipro and visit the Campus arena for first time. I am flattered by the way the article shifts so swiftly yet with ease from the GNU GPL to big companies taking OSS initiatives to the way students play around with FOSS softwares(just the way I do). I would like to see a few more articles on FOSS(free open source software) with more Indian perspective added to it and the way Wipro is implementing OSS (if any) in one of its leading projects.
These days the trend is more on compatibility and interoperability between different OS’ and GNU/Linux. We also see people trying to get Linux based distributions installed just to see how the eye candy 3D Desktop works(beryl and compiz buzz). There are many such projects around which are getting people from different platforms to try and see the effect these projects produce.
Praveer wrote:
Oss plays a great role in server… How about in desktop pc?? Will it supersede windows??
A wonderful article to read. Even the Windows makers- Microsoft have decided to go open source. They have given their Linux distro the name “Microsoft Linux”
Its just a matter of time when entire IT field goes open source. Though, Windows would still be in its place due to its advancement on GFX related apps like games and animations……but even linux may be soon developed to match Windows! Personally, I am using both Windows and Linux, Linux being more secure, thats what I feel. Though it also has an unfriendly user interface(ya I also used it without the X11), it looks even better than the Vista OS when Beryl (on Ubuntu)is installed….
As Rajesh said, It is a very good platform to learn and advance, as we can edit the source codes and try to make it even better! Waiting for more articles on OSS
I am very much interested in Open Source Software which encourages us to do something better with computer, to play with it, and obviously to enrich our knowledge. One more thing, OSS can be modified by all the people, which may cause a very small project to be resulted in a very useful one.
I have seen a movie named ‘Antitrust’ which strongly encourages the OSS because according to them technology belongs to human knowlwdge.
thanks for very nice article about OSS softwares. Acording to Mitchell Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development The beauty of open source is that should something need to be fixed, replaced, or created, you are not only permitted but encouraged to do that yourself. As Mr. Rajesh said Open Sourcing of software provides a huge ground to study and involve in the process of creating good software.
OSS aritcle is good one.
OSS providing a great growth in IP telephony e.g. Asterisk(a pbx software) etc……
i am always supporting the OSS, as it causes to create an environment where we people could really learn and do something which in future would make a revolutionary movement in the field of IT….
Thank you for the valuable article on OSS. Looking forward for more articles on OSS.
I thank all of the guys who’ve responded to the article. This category’s goal is to discuss about the latest technology trends and what better whay to start than talking about OSS. We would discuss more about OSS and other technologies in the future articles.
Just to specifically answer a query from Raghul above, OSS does not necessarily mean server. Infact the scope of OSS on the desktop side is unlimited. If you visit http://sourceforge.net and look at the categories and projects, you would be able to conclude that there is enough for the destop world too.
Infact more specifically if you take linux world itself, I would like to leave you guys with a couple of thougts.
a) Debian is one of the free linux distributions which has a very small footprint and easily installable as a desktop OS
b) Linux is gaining market share increasingly and is fast becoming the second largest in terms of desktop installations (some of them claim it’s already the second largest, although there are not exact numbers to authenticate, it either there or pretty close to overtaking Mac). And by 2010 folks are predicting that it might gain as much as 20-25% market share.
To comment on statement made by Parag D, “Windows would still be in its place due to its advancement on GFX related apps like games and animations……but even linux may be soon developed to match Windows!” yes true, now that we have Wine(http://www.winehq.com) and Cedega(http://www.cedega.com) a proprietary clone of Wine as OSS we will be soon seeing almost all Windows Gfx apps and games playable in linux!!
Thanks Rajesh
For a nice article….
looking forward for some more articles on OSS
oss will encourage lot of learners to learn about the design of a software and can compare the advantages and its improvement in its weaker side,then,innovation of new dimension in software ll increase to a larger extent.
This information is good….
I got lots of information…..
Thanks for the info….
Looking forward to more interesting info…..
Yes., I do agree, OSS refers not only to servers but also to all the Free and GPL softwares. I am a linux freak. I am using Debian etch. What I am trying to convey here is about the rate of growth for OSS usage. Some people are not aware of the OSS (novice users).. Some people are aware but are not ready to use OSS ( lack of knowledge).
. Windows severs rocks in server environment, a study says there is a increase in the window servers in server side platform. Using Linux in server side increases their overall cost ( this too is a survey). May be ., But LIC is turning its computers to Linux 
. My view is that, If Educational institutions are using OSS, then surely there will be an enormous growth in usage of OSS and we can also fight piracy. 
…
Take for an example., Most of the schools and colleges have computers, students has a basic programming on C language. Even for compiling the C Code, Schools and colleges mostly (as of my knowledge) use Turbo C that too pirated version. How many are using gcc???
Ok., C sounds technical… Consider this scenario., Students are getting started with office packages from lower classes. Most Schools are not using OpenOffice, they teach Microsoft Ofice. So from the beginning they are used to MS.
I am not against Ms or commerical softwares