What is open source technologies? Advantages of using open source?

Open source software is software in which the source code used to create the program is freely available for the public to view, edit, and redistribute. Any type of software program can be open source, including operating systems, databases, applications, games, and even programming languages.

 

Advantages of using open source:

 

When something is referred to as 'open source', it means that people can modify and share the code because its design is publicly accessible. Anybody can modify the code to suit their own needs. Open source technology has been around for quite some time now. In the early days of software development, code was shared among developers so they could learn from each other and advance the sector. Here are some fundamental advantages I believe open source offers over proprietary solutions:

 

FLEXIBILITY AND AGILITY

 

IT leaders must fundamentally provide flexibility and agility for their enterprise. If you can't compete on agility, you're going to get left behind by the competition. Open source enables technology agility, typically offering multiple ways to solve problems. Open source helps keep your IT organization from getting blocked because a particular capability isn't available from a vendor. Instead of waiting for the vendor to deliver that capability, you can create it yourself.

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COST-EFFECTIVENESS

 

Open source is generally much more cost-effective than a proprietary solution. Not only are open source solutions typically much more inexpensive in an enterprise environment for equivalent or superior capability, but they also give enterprises the ability to start small and scale. Given that enterprises are often budget challenged, it just makes financial sense to explore open source solutions.

 

SOLID INFORMATION SECURITY

 

Commercial open source has a solid information security record in a dangerous world. Obviously, it's difficult to claim security superiority for any solution and it's a challenging environment for all of us, but the responsiveness of the open source community and vendors relative to information security problems has been very good. The fact that we've had eyes on code that in some cases is decades old, and we were able to identify and fix problems when they became apparent, rather than have the code molder in a proprietary environment where few knew about the exposure but some were exploiting it, is an advantage of open source.

 

SHARE MAINTENANCE COSTS

 

You can solve your enterprise problems while effectively sharing some of the maintenance costs. One of the fundamental advantages of open source is community involvement. Rather than writing an application and having to sustain it yourself, you can share the cost of maintaining and sustaining applications among multiple parties.