Open Source: A Double-Edged Sword

     I was browsing the web earlier this week and found a really great article about the benefits and drawbacks of both open source and closed source programs. You can find it HERE. (By the way, I highly advise people to not click on random links like this one unless it is from a trusted site. If you hover your mouse over the link and look at the bottom left-hand corner, you can see the url. Make sure that the link that you're about to click leads to a safe website.) The author provides a very unbiased opinion and concludes that a market with a mix of open and closed sourced programs is more beneficial than a market that consists solely of one or the other. Being a supporter of open software, I was surprised by these results and now have a more embracing view of closed source software. Today's blog will provide a brief overview of these two types of software.

Image from the Open Source Initiative's site at OpenSource.org

     For those of you that don't know, when a program is open source it means that the source code is available for public viewing and (generally) open for usage/modification. The opposite of this would be a closed source program, where only the company that makes it has access to the source code. An example of a closed source application is Microsoft Word, where users pay for the right to use the application. An open source alternative to Word would be Open Office, which is free (like almost all open source programs). A prominent example of a closed source operating system is Windows, while an open source counterpart would be Linux. The difference between these two would be that some Linux distributions build off of others because the code is all open source, while none of Windows code is available for other operating systems, meaning that Linux can cover a wider variety of computer architectures than Windows while Windows is much more profitable and doesn't have to worry about other companies using their code for profit.

Image taken from Ludios.org

     So, what are the benefits and drawbacks of being open source or closed source? For starters, in an open source program the company does not have to pay a massive cost of production and maintenance for a private application for their use, and can instead use an open source alternative and have the public fix the bugs for them. Having open source programs allows anyone to fix bugs in the code, but also means that there is no strict regulation of guidelines for writing the code. This means that the code can be written very poorly or nearly impossible to read, which might cost the company more to fix than the cost of producing a private program itself. On the other hand, having a closed source application means that companies can have stringent rules regarding code syntax, making it easier for them to know what the code is doing, although since there are less people working on the code, logic errors may be more difficult to find. Additionally, there is quality assurance in closed source code while open source is generally free and made by people who don't wish to make money, causing it to be of a generally lower quality than the closed source counterparts. On the other hand, open source programs generally have extremely fast updates for security flaws or problems with the code, since there are so many people using it and fixing it at once, while it takes a specifically trained small team to fix problems in closed source code.
     Since I don't want to overwhelm anyone with information, I will end this blog here. If anyone is interested in learning more about open source and closed source software, then leave me a comment and I will be more than happy to write another blog post on this topic again in the future! I highly recommend that the average consumer and smaller companies check out open source alternatives to programs before deciding to buy a closed source program like Microsoft Word, but I suggest that wealthy businesses stick to a closed source implementation of things. Thanks for reading this post, and be sure to comment with your thoughts below!