SUBMITTED BY: Lavleen gogia 5508409 I.

T(3rd yr)

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is available in source code form for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software. Open source software is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open source code is made available free of charge to the general public. The rationale for this is that a large community of developers who are not concerned with proprietary ownership will produce a more useful and bug-free product for everyone's benefit. The open source concept relies on community members to find and eliminate bugs in the program code, a process which commercially developed and packaged programs do not utilize.

The Open Source Definition:

The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written

and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens. 1. Free Redistribution 2. Source Code 3. Derived Works 4. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups 5. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor 6. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product 7. License Must Not Restrict Other Software

History:
The prehistory of the Open Source Initiative includes the entire history of

Unix, Internet free software, and the hacker culture. OSI was formed as an educational, advocacy, and stewardship organization at a cusp moment in the history of that culture. The free software movement was launched in 1983. 1998, a group of individuals advocated that the term free software should be replaced by open source software (OSS). The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was formed in February 1998 by Eric S. Raymond and Bruce Perens. With at least 20 years of evidence from case histories of closed software development versus open development already provided by the Internet developer community, the OSI presented the 'open source' case to commercial businesses, like Netscape.

Open Source Platforms :

The most well-known open source software is Linux, a

UNIX operating system derivative named after its creator, Linus Torvalds. The Linux kernel is turned into a platform by adding a wide range of utility software, primarily developed under the banner of the Gnu organization The combination of the Linux kernel and the Gnu utilities is still very primitive as compared to the way typical enterprise operating software

 The most widely used open source software however is

probably the Apache Software Foundation's Apache HTTP web server. There are tens of thousands of open source projects underway apart from Linux and Apache, there are only a few that have gained widespread adoption at the enterprise level (and therefore are of particular interest to investors).

 The others include the MySQL databases (acquired by Sun), the Mozilla Internet browser, the JBoss application server (acquired by Red Hat), the Xen hypervisor (acquired by Citriz), and a series of programming development tools such

as Ruby, PHP, Python and Perl.

10 Reasons Open Source Is Good for Business

Rather, free and open source software (FOSS) holds numerous other compelling advantages for businesses, some of them even more valuable than the software's low price
1. Security

2. Quality
3. Customizability 4. Freedom

5. Flexibility

 6. Interoperability
7. Auditability 8. Support Options 9. Cost 10. Try Before You Buy

Pros and cons

The main advantage for business is that open source is a good

way for business to achieve greater penetration of the market. The OSS development approach has helped produce reliable, high quality software quickly and inexpensively. It is said to be more reliable since it typically has thousands of independent programmers testing and fixing bugs of the software It is flexible because modular systems allow programmers to build custom interfaces, or add new abilities to it and it is innovative since open source programs are the product of collaboration among a large number of different programmers.

 It is sometimes said that the open source development process

may not be well defined and the stages in the development process, such as system testing and documentation may be ignored. Not all OSS initiatives have been successful, for example, SourceXchange and Eaze] Software experts and researchers who are not convinced by open sources ability to produce quality systems identify the unclear process, the late defect discovery and the lack of any empirical evidence as the most important problems In terms of security, open source may allow hackers to know about the weaknesses or loopholes of the software more easily than closed-source software.

Thank you