Coming from a developing country I have learned to appreciate and value the importance of the open source initiative. The current costs and licensing policies to use commercial applications is simply too expensive for many public institutions in developing countries to be able to afford them. Moreover, many software companies are now charging an annual fee for using an application, so instead of being a just one-time payment, institutions must pay every year as long as they want to use it. No wonder that most public academic institutions in Latin America are using a variety of open source software such as Linux, Apache, and Moodle.
Being free is just one of the advantages of open source software. An additional great advantage is that the source code is available to practically anyone, also free of charge. By providing the source code, anyone who has the programming knowledge and skills could contribute to fix some of the existing issues with the application or to add new features in order to keep improving it. Indeed, the quality of several open source applications rivals or even exceeds that of commercial products. For instance, the Apache web server is used by about 55% of more than 200 million websites around the world (http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/02/22/february_2010_web_server_survey.html).
Certainly, the open source initiative could be criticize from different points of views, such as:
a) Not all open source programs have sufficient quality.
b) It’s difficult to find good manuals and documentation to use some open source programs.
c) There is no guarantee that a specific open source program will not be deprecated very soon.
d) Companies and programmers should be compensated for their time and effort.
e) It takes longer for open source programs to be released or patched.
a) Not all open source programs have sufficient quality.
b) It’s difficult to find good manuals and documentation to use some open source programs.
c) There is no guarantee that a specific open source program will not be deprecated very soon.
d) Companies and programmers should be compensated for their time and effort.
e) It takes longer for open source programs to be released or patched.
You organized the advantages and disadvantages of the OSS very well, Miguel. Yes, we cannot afford the software costs. I could not imagine how we can survive without IUware website. Therefore, we need to promote the development of the OSS to have at least basic required tools free. As an example, Open Office is a great tool and free. :) I also understand your concerns about the limitations and issues of the OSS at the last part. Thanks for your ideas on this important topic.
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