Open Source Technology and Its Benefits

With aggressive schedules, challenges to adapt quickly to the changing business needs and with tight budgets, organizations all over the world are moving towards the open source technology. Open source software includes operating systems, programs and applications that have its source code published for the public use, allowing everyone to copy, re-distribute and modify the code without paying any royalties.

But this term is often misunderstood as the users often think that the word is synonymous with free. But this is not so with all the software versions.

In this article, we will discuss more about the open source technology and its huge benefits for the business world.

Open source products evolve through a great community cooperation that includes individual developers and programmers as well as large companies. The license allows everybody in the community to study thoroughly, change the codes and use it for any purpose. In today’s enterprise environments, any software application needs to be fine tuned and well integrated to adapt the demands of the business users and also ensure security.

A big challenge with the closed-source proprietary solutions is that it does not allow the users to make any changes to the software. In simple words you are not allowed to see how the software works or even customize it accordingly to fit the unique needs of your business or even optimize the performance.

The open source software development started back to the 1980s and the Linux operating system was the first major open source software effort that is now a main operating system used for web hosting servers. The most popular web development platforms include the WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and many other CMSs that are preferred by most business owners.

• Flexibility: The biggest benefit of open source is that it offers great flexibility to use the platform according to your needs. Interoperability and connectivity with the existing infrastructure or the platform is easier to attain and it also offers the liberty to the users to make changes to its features.
• Reliability: Open source is always under continuous review, which leads to more reliability of the platform. Programs like Apache, DNS, HTML and Perl have proven to be robust and reliable even under strict conditions. Since developers devote their time and expertise, it is updated frequently and various features get added to it from time to time.
• Quality: A software platform that is developed by countless users usually improves the quality of the product as many new and innovative features get added and the product gets enhanced. In general, the technology gets closer to the users as they can have a free hand in making it also. And this is the prime reason for enterprises to choose the software.
• Support options: Open source is usually available for free and it has a huge community group to support the piece of software. The community works together and creates various modules that can be used by paid support options. The price still lies far below the one the proprietary vendors usually charge. For any problems faced with the software, the community is always there to help you out, which saves a lot of time.