Open Source

Open Source is by no means a new phenomenon, it is the bases of every school since the time of Pythagoras. Open Source is the idea of freely sharing logical work/ideas so as to form a foundation for modern science. There is no need for everyone to invent the wheel, it has already been invented and improved upon. Why not work as a collective to improve the wheel instead of everyone spending effort on duplicating logical work which has already been done?

Open source stands for the three freedoms, the freedom to use, the freedom to improve upon and the freedom to redistribute the improved version. I find it funny that people are amazed by the fact that someone would give away their work freely for anyone to use, did Pythagoras not do exactly that ? The fact is that capitalism is only one of the ways people are motivated, scientists around the world are not motivated by monetary.* Despite the worries of some people in the software industry there will always be room for commercial software and the great thing is that commercial software is much easier to make when most of the work is already completed with open source components.

Open source is really a collection of licenses ranging from "Public Domain" to GPL, each has it's own pros and cons. The only degree in which they differ is the extent of the viral effect.** The following lines will attempt to explain the most prominent: Public Domain is used to describe any work which is not licensed at all, a good example of public domain are Beethoven's symphonies. Public domain is considered the property of society as a whole and therefor cannot be released under other licenses.

BSD style licensing is the one closest to Public Domain, it allows you to redistribute code and/or binary files at will as long as all distributed code is still licensed under BSD and that the original authors are given credit. The Apache License enables anyone to redistribute unmodified versions of the software as long as the original license accompanies the software. Distribution of modified versions must include complete source code. LGPL is a variant of the GPL license, it makes only one exception from GPL, anyone is allowed to produce software that depends on lgpl licensed libraries without having to release the work under lgpl. GPL requires any work depending on any form of GPL licensed work to be released under GPL. A good example would be a music program that uses an operating system library to forward the "sound" to the sound-card. If the Operating system library is GPL licensed the music program cannot use the library unless it is licensed under GPL or another OSI compliant license.***

GPL is probably the most viral** of these while Public Domain is the most relaxed but the objective of all these licenses is the same. Promote the re-use of intellectual work for the common good of society.

*For a good reading on the motivation behind open source see a book called "The Hackers Ethic"

** The viral effect is where one author gives away his work but requires anyone distributing programs that depend on/use/are derived from his work to make the program free.

*** OSI, Open Source Initiative