Good evening people. Its hard to weird people around the world. Here's information about Open-Source Software.

Open-source software is software produced by a community of several hundred thousand programmers around the world. Open-source software is free and can be modified by users. Works derived from the original code must also be free, and the software can be redistributed by the user without additional licensing. Open-source by definition not restricted  to any  specific operating system or hardware technology. although most open-source software is currently based on Linux or Unix operating system. A related free software movement supported by the Free Software Foundation supports similiar goals of making software freely available without the restrictions of copyright or patent law. Check out this cool link for more details

Open-source software is based on the premise that is superior to commercially produced proprietary software bacause thousands of programmers around the world working for no pay can read, perfect, distribute and modify the source code much faster and with more reliable results, than small teams of programmers working for a single software company.

Although it may seem that contributors to open-source software receive nothing in return, in fact they receive respect, prestige and access to a network of knowledgeable programmers (who in turn can be tapped for solutions or even employment). And although it may seem the process of software improvement is chaotic or unorganized, in fact these are self-organizing communities of dedicated professionals who have a well-defined organizational structure and a set of business process (or procedures) for getting the work done. The open-source movement has been envolving for more than 30 years and has demonstrated after many years of effort that it can produce commercially acceptable, high-quality software.

Now thousands of open-source programs are available from hundreds of Web sites. The range of open-source software extends from operating systems to office suites, browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox and games. Several large software companies are converting some of their commercial programs to open source. IBM for instance, is handling over its Java-based database program called Cloudscape to the Apache Software Foundation, an open-source group. Novell is investing heavily in open-source companies that sell versions of open-source group.

Thats all for today. Have a nice day & please leave your comments.