Open Source

Many people and business misinterpreted the term ‘free’ in free software thinking free as in zero cost (Gallego et al., 2008). Some of the people realised that there was problem with the term ‘Free Software’. They wanted people and business to understand the idea that the software was open and the source code was available. So Eric Raymond, Larry Augustin, Michael Tiemann and some other member set up a meeting and came up with the concept of the term ‘Open Source’ (Open Source Initiative, n.d. a; Revolution OS, 2002; Gallego et al., 2008). Eric Raymond jointly with Bruce Perens in 1998 went on to found the Open Source Initiative (Open Source Initiative, n.d. a). 

Open source doesn’t only mean that the source code is open, but it is the kind of software which gives the users 10 rights which is mentioned in the Open Source definition:

·         The software can be freely redistributed to someone else.

·         The source code should be included while distribution along with the executable program.

·         Derived works must be possible if someone wants to modify the source code and improve the program.

·         If someone needs to change the code, they might have to change the name of the program or mark out your change very clearly so as to protect the integrity of the author’s source code.

·         There should be no discrimination against people or groups.

·         There should be no discrimination against any fields of endeavor.

·         The license has to be distributable.

·         The license should not be specific to a product.

·         The license should also not restrict other software.

·         The license should be technology neutral (Open Source Initiative, n.d. b).

In January of 1998, Netscape communication announced that it was giving away the source code. Netscape is important in Open Source history because it was the first large and major software industry to give away the proprietary code and participate in open source (Raymond, 1999; DiBona and Ockman, 1999). The project was named Mozilla. Mozilla released Firefox 1.0 in 2004 which in less than a year had been downloaded more than hundred million times and in July 31, 2009, this number reached one billion (Mozilla, 2011). One of the reasons for this move by Netscape was Eric Raymond’s paper ‘The Cathedral & the Bazaar’ (Williams, 2002). This paper was Raymond’s observation of why the open source world worked, why GNU/Linux produced highly quality software and was becoming a success constantly in spite of violating all of the standard rules of software engineering (Raymond, 1999; Crowston et al., 2007). For a project to become successful, project group should be made small, complexity should be controlled and there should be a closely managed objective.  But GNU/Linux proved it wrong. In this paper, Raymond compared two different style of development; conventional closed development style and peer to peer decentralized development style. He referred the conventional development style to a cathedral. In the cathedral style there was tight specification of objective, small project group with bureaucracy and long release interval. Whereas the bazaar style had much more peer to peer review process, short release period and received constant feedback from the people who were outside of the project (Raymond, 1999; Revolution OS, 2002).

REFERENCES
http://pravab.blogspot.com/2011/09/references.html