Open Source software   

The term Open source refers to something people can modify and share because its design is publicly accessible. Where as software is set of instruction(program) which tells computer what  to do and how to do. Software actually tells hardware to do certain task.

Open source software is computer software in which that source code is freely available to the general public for redistribution, modification, examination or any other feasible purpose.

Open source software(OSS) is software that has been released under an Open source Initiative(OSI) certified license.

The term open source originated in the context of software development to designate a specific approach to creating computer programs. Open source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance. In other word it is a program or software in which the source code is available to general public for use or modification from it original design free of cost.

fig: Open source Vs close source software

Open source code is generally created as a collaborative(joint) effort in which programmers improve upon the code and share the changes within the community.

OSS is available in source code form at free of cost.The distributions of open source software expect and encourage user and outside programmers to examine the code in order to identify problems and to modify the code with suggested improvement and enhancements.

User get the freedom to run the open source software for any purpose and redistribute copies of either the original or modified form.

Apache HTTP Server, MySQL, Firefox, Linux, WordPress, Peal Zip, VLC are some example of Open source software.

Importance of OSS are as follows:

• Reduce the software cost as software can be developed faster with the help of available code
• High quality software can be achieved
• Great development in the field of software development because of collaboration
• As OSS has open access to the source code we can modify software in any manner we want i.e. software becomes more flexible
  
•  there will be good security as code are reviewed and collaborate by experts of community