Talk:The open source movement

The open source movement is a broad-reaching movement comprised both officially and unofficially of individuals that feel that software should be produced altruistically.

-- There is a problem with this opening sentence in both the definition of the word movement and the use of the word to define itself. Culture might be more suitable. You might want to discuss with programmers who embrace the culture what role altruism plays (I think not much)

Programmers that support the open source movement philosophy, contribute to the open source community via voluntarily writing and exchanging programming code

-- as opposed to as slaves?

...for software development.

-- and applications and other runtime uses

This approach to software development allows anyone to obtain and modify open source code. These modifications are distributed back to the developers within the open source community that are working with this software.

-- not necessarily distributed back; there may be some licenses that require that. The typical thing is that changes need to be distributed back to the community if they are distributed anywhere else. But if you just change it and use for your own requirements, there is no need to distribute back

In this way, the identities of all individuals participating in code modification are disclosed and the transformation of the code is documented overtime [2]. This method makes it difficult to establish ownership of a particular bit of code but is in keeping with the open source movement philosophy. These goals promote the production of “high quality programs”

-- there is no indication that open source licensed code is of more or less quality than code licensed in other ways

as well as “working cooperatively with other similarly minded people” to improve open source technologies [1].

-- there are no open source technologies; open source is a culture (or movement if you prefer) and about four dozen approved license terms and condisitions (many more than than not officially approved by the Open Source Initiative)

[edit] Evolution The Open Source Movement is branched from the free software movement, a late 80s movement headed by Richard Stallman with the launching the GNU/Linux project [3].

-- Stallman launched Gnu; Linux came from elsewhere later

Stallman is regarded within the open source community as sharing a key role in the conceptualization of freely shared source code for software development [4]. The term “free software” in the free software movement is meant to imply freedom of software exchange and modification, but not freedom as in no costs [5]. Both the free software movement and the open source movement share this view of free exchange of programming code and this is often why both of the movements are sometimes referenced in literature as part of the FOSS or “Free and Open Software” or FLOSS “Free/Libre Open Source” communities.

The movements share fundamental differences in the view on open software, however.

-- did the previous sentence leave out source after open or is the author intending to go down another subject

The main factionalizing difference between the groups is the relationship between open source and propriety software. Often makers of propriety software, such as Microsoft, may make efforts to support open source software to remain competitive [6].

-- such as Microsoft and IBM and Oracle and .... and they don't "make" proprietary software; the characterization proprietary like the charactrerization open source in this context is just a license term and condition

Members of the open source community are willing to coexist with the makers of propriety software [7]

-- in fact they are basically one and the same (IBM, Oracle, etc.)

and feel that the issue of whether software is open source is a matter of practicality [8].

In contrast, members of the free software community maintain the vision that all software is a part of freedom of speech [9] and that proprietary software is unethical and unjust [10]. The free software movement openly champions this belief, via talks that denounce propriety software and the community as whole refuses to support propriety software.

While cognizant of the fact that both it and the open source movement share similarities in practical recommendations regarding open source, the free software movement fervently continues to distinguish themselves from the open source movement entirely [11]. The free software movement maintains that it has fundamentally different attitudes towards the relationship between open source and propriety software. The free software community does not view the open source community as their target grievance, however. Their target grievance is propriety software itself [12].

[edit] Formalization In February 1998 the open source movement was adopted, formalized, and spearheaded by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), an organization formed to market software “as something more amenable to commercial business use” [13]

The OSI owns the trademark “Open Source” [14] Open Source Developments

-- Please check with OSI; I am not sure whether the previous sentence is true or not

Overall, the software developments that have come out of the open source movement have not been unique to the computer science field, but they have been successful in developing alternatives to propriety software. Members of the open source community improve upon code and write programs that can rival much of the propriety software that is already available. [15]

-- Just to be clear, they cannot improve on proprietary-licensed code because the source is not available; they reverse engineer it

[edit] Examples of software that have come out of the Open Source Movement • Linux –a Unix-Based operating system used predominantly in servers [16]

• Apache—a leading server software and scripting language on the web [17]

• MySQL—a database management system [18]

• PHP—a widely used open source general-purpose scripting language [19]

• Blender— a 3D graphics and animation software [20]

• OpenOffice.org – an office suite software with word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation capabilities [21]

• Mozilla –a web browser and e-mail client[22]

• Perl—a programming/scripting language[23]

-- OpenOffice and Mozilla in partcular on this list and many other well known software products licesned under open soruce terms and conditions were originally proprietary and only open sourced when they did not reach critical mass in the marketplace (in fact, most have still not reached critical mass in the market place and likely never will)

[edit] Strengths • The collaborative nature of the open source community creates software that can offer customizability and as a result promotes the adoption of its products. [24]

• The open source community promotes the creation of software that is not proprietary thus resulting in lower costs. [25]

-- no research backs up this claim; there might be lower up front costs

• Development of open source software within the community is motivated by the individual who have expressed interest in the code and software creation. This differs from proprietary software that is often motivated via monetary means. [26].

-- Most open source licensed software was spawned by a for-profit company

[edit] Drawbacks • The structure of the open source community requires that individuals must have programming expertise in order to engage in open code modification and exchange. Individuals interested in supporting the open source movement may lack this skill set. [27]

• Programmers and developers comprise a large percentage of the open source community and sought-out technical support may not be useful or clear to open source software lay-users. [28]

• The structure of the open source community is one involves contributions of multiple developers and programmers; software produced in this fashion may lack standardization and be incompatible with various computer applications and capabilities. [29]

[edit] Evidence of Open Source Adoption The following are events and applications that have been developed via the open source community as and echo the ideologies of the open source movement. [30]

OpenCourseWare Consortium—organization composed various colleges that supported the open source software. This organization was headed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was established to aid in the exchange of open source educational materials. [31]

Wikipedia—user generated online encyclopedia that had branched into many other academic areas such as Wikiversity— a community dedicated to the creation and exchange of learning materials [32]

Project Gutenberg—prior to the exist of Google Scholar Beta, this was the first supplier of electronic books and the very first free library project [33]

Google—this search engine has led the way in transformation of Web-based applications, such as books, scholarly journals, that are based primarily on open source software. [34] Google continues to make applications based on open software. Recently, in November 2009, Google announced that it would be “enabling people everywhere to find, and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state districts, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar” [1]

-- very misleading; the Google search engine is totally proprietary

Microsoft and Apache—Microsoft, a leading producer of proprietary software increased its participation and contribution to the open source community to remain marketable. In 2008, Microsoft made a commitment to the Apache Software Foundation, and pledged $100,000 a year to the Apache Software Foundation. It renewed this pledge in November 2009 stating that “We’re happy to share another milestone in our work with open source communities.” [35]

Government agencies and infrastructure software—Government Agencies are utilizing opens source infrastructure softwares, like the Linux operating system and the Apache Web-server into software, to manage information. [36].