Open-Source Revolution
I’ll admit, there was a time when I would laugh at the thought of open source programs doing things better than an established software program. It just seemed too good to be true that, a freely-available program with no license fees, could perform equal or better functions than it’s paid counterpart. For the longest time we have been subjected to the Microsoft phenomenon and it’s taking us a while to snap out of it. Microsoft began their business by arm wrestling investors and future clients alike to allow Windows to become the dominant OS (operating system) for personal and business computing. For too long consumers have been dealing with outrageously high prices on Microsoft products ranging from Windows to Office products and other “high-end” business tools. Maybe the developers that began some of the most notorious open source projects shared my view of “free is better” because it wasn’t long until a silent rebellion started to take place. In the early days skeptics of the open source revolution speculated that the economic impact of open source applications was intangible and as such it was predicted that in the long run projects derived from an open source library were unsustainable and lacked scalability for the market’s need for new and better technology. But it’s the year 2009 and open source applications are bigger than ever in the tech industry.
Linus Torvalds… you may not know him but you have surely heard of his brainchild, the Linux operating system. Linus was the creator of the kernel (subsystem) for the Linux operating system leading to one of the most successful and widely popular open source projects to date. The interesting thing about Linux was that it was built on the UNIX system (derived sometime in the late 70s) and this fact made it a sharply superior operating system than Windows, which was built on the DOS system. Unfortunately to the general population the difference between UNIX and DOS seemed like a difference between a movie star and an amateur actor, they both strived to do the same thing but one was popular and one was not. In the case of Windows and Linux it is not a question of whether DOS is better than UNIX, it was simply a matter of timing and aggression to corner the market. It was because of this Windows dominance that Linux never really gained fame until recently where it has been in the spotlight as more and more people warm up to the open source ideology. But Linux has not been quiet on its front, it has been recently adopted as the OS of choice for super computers, servers, cluster-farms, and of course personal computing. It also provides users with the most amazing library of programs and utilities with diverse uses mostly for free. In a comparison war Windows wins in popularity (though that’s changing fast) but Linux wins in diversity and community support. If you want an operating system you have Linux, if you want a full Office suite you have Open Office 3.0, if you need any kind of Windows utility or application there’s a good chance that there’s a Linux version of it. I have personally worked with Linux and Apple and I must say that it feels good to have fresh contenders that force Microsoft to lower its price for software and diminish its monopoly on the market.
So a thank you goes to the Linux community for becoming one of the most popular examples of open source projects in the world. Without the initiative of able developers we would still have vendor lock-ins in the tech industry and everyone would have to pay dearly for every little thing they tried to do with computers.
By: Mirand Lamani