What follows is a general definition of open source given by Wikipedia, a compute program in which the source code is available to the general public for use and modification from its original design. The open mind of open source stimulates the rapid development and spread use of software, as well as brings quality and maintenance problems.
Open is the key feature of open source. First, it is free to use. Nowadays, we can easily find many free software, such as Linux, R (a statistical computing software), both of which have been used by many people. More importantly, many expert users are becoming contributors for bug fixing, or new feature development because these software are also open to modify. People get benefit by using these tools and then contribute their own effort to make it better. The open mind is the soul of open source software.
Of course, open source software has its own disadvantage. The quality and maintenance of open source software can’t be guaranteed. Because open source software developers do not need to make a strict commitment about functionality and quality to the users, while commercial companies such as Microsoft, Oracle will be required to pay more responsibility for their software products. Sometimes open source software can’t maintain consistency and coherence. For example, Android OS has too many different versions released by its principal contributor Google and some smart phone or pad manufacturers, such as Samsung, Amazon. This messy leads to a difficult problem for App developers on Android platform. They have to develop different versions of the same App for different cell phones. In addition, mistakes in open source software might be hard to solve. I have found a mistake in a mathematical package of R, which makes it can only be installed in Linux but not MAC OS. The worse thing is that there is no way to report the mistake and get the support to solve the problem because the original developer has stopped maintenance several years before.
Open is the key feature of open source. First, it is free to use. Nowadays, we can easily find many free software, such as Linux, R (a statistical computing software), both of which have been used by many people. More importantly, many expert users are becoming contributors for bug fixing, or new feature development because these software are also open to modify. People get benefit by using these tools and then contribute their own effort to make it better. The open mind is the soul of open source software.
Reference from http://www.r-project.org/
Of course, open source software has its own disadvantage. The quality and maintenance of open source software can’t be guaranteed. Because open source software developers do not need to make a strict commitment about functionality and quality to the users, while commercial companies such as Microsoft, Oracle will be required to pay more responsibility for their software products. Sometimes open source software can’t maintain consistency and coherence. For example, Android OS has too many different versions released by its principal contributor Google and some smart phone or pad manufacturers, such as Samsung, Amazon. This messy leads to a difficult problem for App developers on Android platform. They have to develop different versions of the same App for different cell phones. In addition, mistakes in open source software might be hard to solve. I have found a mistake in a mathematical package of R, which makes it can only be installed in Linux but not MAC OS. The worse thing is that there is no way to report the mistake and get the support to solve the problem because the original developer has stopped maintenance several years before.
hi Jingmei,
ReplyDeleteJust by reading at you title, I totally agree with you that open source is place that you can get the applications you need for need. However, the quality of the application may be not as good as other licensed versions. I did some research and found out that open source application have a bad rating for customer services because There are nobody can help you when you encounter problems.