BENEFITS OF OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

Joseph Mathews, Muhammad Mahfuz

Department of Computer Science and Information System, University of Technology,Malaysia Skudai, Johor, Malaysia
octaviajm@gmail.com mahfuzgear1@gmail.com

Open source software has given a major impact to the computer industry since late 1990s and it has changed the way of software that is perceived, developed and deployed in many area. Open source software is usually developed by uncoordinated but loosely collaborating programmers, using freely distributed source code and the communications infrastructure of the Internet and many of the contributors are volunteers. The term open source was adopted in large area because ambiguous nature of free software. Even though the software that produced from them is significant but the development process of the software is often described as unstructured and unorganized.

projects dispense with the concept of anything easily recognisable as a formal specification, it's hard to point to that as good way of defining what is a bug and what is a feature. For an OSS candidate to be considered operationally robust and highly reliable, it must have been operational in a large number of applications and its performance evaluated and reviewed. For critical systems, you would be prudent to adopt software that has been widely used commercially instead of one that has yet to gain sufficient operational data and use analysis.

The term open source was adopted in large area because ambiguous nature of free software.
INTRODUCTION Open source software is a computer software that is available freely and its programming code can be modified. Open source software is a free software that user can get from the internet or another source. The source code of the software can be studied, changed ,improved and also can be distributed to the others. This because the license of the software permits to do that. Many open source software is developed in a public availability and communication that is internet. Many user of open source software are satisfied with the software because it is free and stable. And if they are the developers, they can upgrade or improve the software and distribute it to others.
OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE BENEFITS

Upgradability If the target application is to be operational, maintained, and extendable, the new software must be upgradable to provide additional capabilities. As a result, the current and future status of your OSSs development becomes a significant factor, because continuous development and bug fixing enable future upgrade capabilities. In addition, backward compatibility is important so that future versions of the OSS require minimal recoding. Distributable The right to redistribute modifications and improvements to the code, and to reuse other open source code, permits all the advantages due to the modifiability of the software to be shared by large communities. This is usually the point that differentiates open source software licences from ``nearly free'' ones. In substance, the fact that redistribution rights cannot be revoked, and that they are universal, is what attracts a substantial crowd of developers to work around open source software projects.

Usually, the first perceived benefit of open source models is the fact that open source software is made available at a low cost. But this characteristic is not exclusive to open source software, and several copyright protected products are made available in similar ways. What really distinguishes open source software available without fee is the combination of synergistic impact and inclusion of many advantages: Reliability Reliability is a loose term. Broadly, we can take it to mean the absence of defects which cause incorrect operation, data loss or sudden failures, perhaps what many people would mean when they use the term `bug'. Strictly, a bug would also mean failure to meet the specification, but since most Open Source

Cost Most current Open Source projects are also available free of royalties and fees, leading to the confusion around the commonly used term `free software'. Regrettably the English language does not have separate concepts for free-of-charge and free as in unconstrained; other languages are better equipped to describe the difference between `freedom' and `free of charge' (libre vs.gratis). Proponents of free software

licences tend to emphasise liberty over cost although in practice the main open source projects are free in both senses of the word. For the most part, OSS is considered free in the sense that generally no or minimal costs (for example, shipping and handling) are involved. However, there are indirect costs, including development, technical support, and maintenance efforts.

Flexibility and Freedom In a business context, software flexibility is about being able to choose solutions suitable for the needs of the users. Many commercial software products will claim flexibility as a builtin feature and some will undoubtedly be correct. Our view is that that flexibility should really mean business flexibility, so that as requirements in the business change, solutions should not be unreasonably constrained by software. In particular, we view this as being especially important in the area of infrastructure components the architecture of the IT solution rather than any one package. For an OSS to be adopted, it must be flexible enough to be customized or integrated in widely different technical environments. The package might also have to be extended to include extra, potentially proprietary functionality. While OSS is generally consider highly customizable and extensibleas the source code is publicly availableyou must take into account the complexity of the effort to make such modifications at the source level.

Fig.2 Example of open source software

CONCLUSIONS Open source software has become first choice among the user. And contribute to that is the benefits of the open source software. Open source software will become an important part to the software industry as it continues to growing.

REFERENCES
[1] Fig. 1 The graph show the open source software that being used by Industry and Software category. [2] [3] [4] C. DiBona, S. Ockman, and M. Stone, Open Source: Voices from the Source Revolution, OReilly & Associates, Cambridge, Mass., 1999. E.S. Raymond, The Cathedral & the Bazaar, OReilly & Associates, Cambridge, Mass., 1999. (2007) Open Source website. [Online]. Available: http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html . The Netcraft Web Server Survey, Sept. 2000; www.netcraft.com/survey (current 21 Feb. 2001).