Advantages and Disadvantages of Open-Source Software - Term Paper Example

Your Goes Here John Q. W. The essay discusses the idea of openness in the area of software, especially for the companies which are involved in purchasing of hardware and software. The essay also details the advantages and disadvantages of open-source software. Table of Contents I. Introduction………………………………………………………………….……………..4 II. The Idea of Openness ………………………………………….………….………….…...4 III. Analysis …………………………………………………………….………………….....6 IV. Aspects of Openness ……………………………………………………………….…….9 V. Standards and Licensing………………………………………………………………….12 VI. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….14 VII. Cited References………………………………………………………………….….….16 Openness I. Introduction Openness is one of the most important aspects in today’s lives. From the sphere of politics to the area of canned food and its ingredients, openness plays a major role. As the years progress, the technology around us keeps proliferating, touching our lives in the way we communicate, create, share, vote and much more. Therefore evaluating technological openness becomes imperative for us. Institutions such as bureaucratic, participatory, hierarchical and autonomy-maximizing can exist seamlessly in the open framework. An open society will also allow individuals and groups to voluntarily choose to submit themselves to arrangements which are more restrictive. Such arrangements can include private communities, clubs and corporate entities. Openness in business and technological organizations also allow an organizational structure which is more rigid and which allows an individual to leave the organization when he or she wants. Hence, by encouraging exploration and innovation, openness in software and hardware companies help in a better performance. II. The Idea of Openness Extropy is basically the idea which states that human endeavours, human organisations and technologies will eventually expand throughout the universe in an orderly manner. Societies which are fundamentally extropic in nature generally facilitate the exchange of ideas and the liberty to criticize an experiment. It is known to all that protecting and forcing bad ideas onto others can be as detrimental as the bad idea itself. Evolutionary ideas and ideas which are flexible can only emerge when critical selection and individuals creation is encouraged by the society. Thus, the freedom of expression in a society which is open can be only protected by a social order which encourages exchanges and voluntary relationships. For the increase and propagation of such social orders, people try to prevent the self imposed authoritative stance of organizations. However the society is full of instances where people have to obey their leaders, buy and use products which are inflexible, conform to hierarchies which are excessive and in today’s digital world, buy and exchange software and hardware pertaining to computers, which are rigid and unable to get modified according to needs of the users. When the society holds all institutions as well as processes as open, it keeps on improving these processes and institutions. In the open societies, it is very common to find programs which is sustained, decision-making which is rational and effective administration. As such, it is very common to see diverse information sources and various types of perspectives in open societies, or more specifically in open software and hardware developments. Experts believe that when behaviour is controlled by a centralized command, exploration and innovation disappears. So does the diversity of opinions as well as the opinions which are very critical and severe. There are a number of social and business orders where openness and the concept of freedom are used for fostering business and technological environment, however for societies or business environments which are highly totalitarian or authoritarian; the business environment suffers to a great extent. Thus, it is absurd that business environments which are governed by centralized control do not allow diversity to develop, which is so important for providing software and hardware technologies. Open societies on the other hand, facilitate the existence of various kinds of technological and business institutions. III. Analysis Like closed organizations which sometimes have Utopian plans for a perfect business organization, openness in companies encourage diversity of value, diversity in preference of lifestyle and diversity in the solution of a particular problem. Thus openness in business environment allows voluntary groupings and individuals to form software and hardware which they prefer. Often, openness in software industry leads to products which are substandard, but the value system of an open organization or open practices eventually help in the evolution of ideas and thereby the evolution of software. In the last decade or so, the Silicon Valley has been experiencing a new trend of openness, which has now reached its zenith of influence. The idea of openness in software industry is good-natured to say the least. Brian Kahin et al (1995, p. 364) explains ‘The different definitions of openness reflect the difficulties inherent in the convergence of two conflicting cultures: telecommunications and computers’. The practice of openness is founded on the components such as communication standards, operating standards, and underlying codes which ultimately benefit the business as well as the end users or consumers. There are a number of detractors of openness in software and hardware industry, who point out that openness is something similar to a Trojan horse. There are a number of companies which compels others into believing that they have embraced openness in their organizational structure. One of the methods of pretending to have incorporated openness in the organization is by joining an Openness Consortium. The number of companies such as Google, Plaxo, Facebook and LinkedIn has joined the Data-Portability Working Group. The Data-Portability Working Group or DPWG serves as the real agents of change; however certain companies can take advantage of such groups. From the point of view of business, joining such groups is very cheap and helps in positive press releases. The unfortunate part about these groups are that some companies which joins such groups has nothing to do whatsoever with open practices in the organizations in its day-to-day operations, however they get compliments from the media and press for joining an openness forum. The second major disadvantage of openness is that it exposes the vulnerabilities of a business to its customers. It is certain that software and hardware companies put a lot of emphasis on its innovations and its patents. A number of companies use a quick-fix method to overcome these vulnerabilities. Creating an Arbitrary Open Standard such as the ones created by Google, in the form of Google’s Open Social Projects and Google’s Android project, and also the announcement made by Facebook that Facebook would-be licensing its own platform very soon. Projects such as these sometimes does create an illusion that companies are wholeheartedly practicing openness, thereby helping to draw the attention away from the company’s violations of privacy. Another ploy used by software companies to show that it is following openness is by the occasional reshuffling its existing processes and practices. The companies Verizon and AT&T tried this method a few months after the Open Handset Alliance trend. In print, the claims made by the companies were convincing however in reality, there were not really any tangible changes. The 4G which is soon to be released was probably the reason why Verizon claimed to have integrated openness. Both these companies had claimed that their networks would allow the use of compatible handsets. In actual fact, there was nothing new in the announcement since some of experienced users of a CDMA as well as GSM phone could have made their handsets compatible with these networks manually anyway. Since AT&T and Verizon announced that their networks were now open, a number of unaware customers actually believed that these companies had created something new. The other method which is very commonly used by companies to pretend that they have incorporated openness is by locking up an existing Open Standard. A number of large companies have often promoted themselves as if they have jumped on to the new bandwagon of openness. The truth however is that these companies temporarily create openness and then go back to their original business practices very soon. An example of such practice would be Microsoft which ventured into the open source territory just like its adversary Linux. For a brief period, Microsoft partnered with Novell for distributing its own version of the Linux operating system. However within a short time, Microsoft claimed that Linux had violated more than 200 of Microsoft’s operating system patents. The users, who had been convinced of the openness of the new Microsoft Linux version, ultimately ended up being misled by the company and its version of openness. IV. Aspects of Openness In the field of technology especially, openness can be found in areas of interoperability, applicability, trustworthiness of system and sustainability. The access and longevity to data and systems is basically called Sustainability. Sustainability in this generation plays a crucial role, since the numbers of software are getting old and many of them are no longer compatible with newer systems. Additionally, a number of digital data gets stolen or lost each and every year around the world. Hence, with so much of digital information being stored and created each and every year sustainably plays a major role in the present as well as the future. In the world of software, software companies try to integrate sustainability by publicly using Documented Data Standards, using a number of healthy marketing strategies and building communities which support software, which enables an easier access to digital information. A number of companies also practice Public Disclosure of the Software Source, which allow the software end-users to use that software rather than considering the software as obsolete and unavailable for support. As it often happens with companies following a Closed Policy of their Proprietary Software, the software often comes to its end of life. Therefore sustainability prolongs the life of the software. For those companies who offer software for different uses, help to augment the Applicability of that software. In several companies which doesn’t follow openness on purchasing software, the software made for them have a single point of control, which means that the aims and uses of that software is very limited. It’s very common to find companies having software which are customized for the lowest common denominator, since the software cannot cater to each and every need of the various customers. However, this problem can be solved with the open model of software creation. Manfred Nagl (1996, p. 36) comments ‘Openness does not necessarily mean that an SDE (Software Development Environments) is configurable in the above sense. However at least the interfaces for the new tools have to be defined and made public.’ Through Open Governance Model as well as Project Participation, the users of the software can more easily modify the software to suit their needs, thereby broadening the Applicability of the software. There are a number of software companies which encourage language localization of their software. For example, if a word processor is available in five languages but is not available in Chinese, the Applicability of that software greatly reduces. If the software however was a Participatory Software Project, a Chinese person could have contributed to the translations making the word processor more broadly applicable. The way in which data or systems operate in multiple versions of an environment is called Interoperability. Interoperability allows systems to share information, communicate and coexist for performing common functions. Especially in the case of the Internet, interoperability becomes an essential function. Almost a billion computers around the world communicate using standardized patterns of communication protocols. Protocols such as TCP IP allow the Internet to achieve interoperability. The reliability of the software or hardware is what is called the Trustworthiness of that hardware and software. One of the best examples of openness incorporated in form of Trustworthiness in the field of software is the Electronic Voting System or the EVS. Electronic voting systems are trusted by millions of people because it is open from the perspective of Public Source Code Disclosure. A proprietary software company by the name of Diebold, created EVS software in USA, but was not perceived to be as trustworthy by the people. A number of people began to express their doubt on that system and it was accused of being faulty. Hence this example proves that people can only trust software meant for public use, when the source code is publicly available. Making the source code publicly available is a licensing issue. V. Standards and Licensing A standard is defined as a set of formal definitions, for ensuring consistency and interoperability of the software or hardware. Various software and hardware companies don’t have their products patented or do not carry royalties. Such software agrees more to the terms of open standards, and gives the greatest levels of consistency and interoperability. Many times, Open Standards which may help in broadening opportunities in the markets are publicly standardized by new trial standards bodies. The Standards Bodies help in innovation of the software and promotes the products with open standards. Michel van Eeten ( 2003, p. 4) comments ‘The research shows how companies have thus far managed to strike a balance between their goal, which is to make money, and openness that prevails in open source and free software communities.’ Especially for ICT, standards are important because it leads to interoperability between diverse hardware and software environments. Therefore, open standards affects those companies which usually purchases hardware and software, making them more consistent. For technological companies which frequently purchases software or hardware, the typical openness related technology terms that applies to them include Data Formats such as HTML an ASCII, Processed Definitions such as BizDex, Communication Protocols like SMTP and TCP IP, Storage Formats such as DVD and ISO – 9960, Programming Languages like PHP and Project Management Processes such as ISO–9001. On the other hand, companies dealing with software and hardware which do not have openness, a number of difficult technological barriers are created by the Closed Standards. Furthermore other factors such as royalties, patents and fees act as a hindrance to open standards. A number of software which is proprietary is often covered by copyright. The software is which are copyrighted, are distributed to companies which purchase them with the help of a quantity of licenses. Licenses of software can be of many kinds. While some licenses allow companies to augment the basic copyrights through modifying and redistributing the software to different branches of the company, some others limit the flexibility and usage of the software by prohibiting redistribution for copying of the software. Hence, some licenses allow openness of behaviour from the licensee. Some of the licenses however limit how the software can be used unless certain specific conditions are met. Therefore it is clear that different types of licenses determine the openness of software. VI. Conclusion We all live in a society and that’s why we are concerned with improvement. Software standards such as Open Source make it easier for organizations to redistribute and customize software according to their needs, thereby reducing costs and increasing productivity. National Research Council (2007, p. 40) states ‘Openness be encouraged so that those deploying software in critical applications are aware of the limits of evidence for its dependability and can make fully informed decisions about whether the benefits of deployment outweigh the residual risks.’ Open societies and openness in the field of software also means that coercive power of a few software giants is greatly curtailed. Therefore, companies integrating openness in their software and hardware dealings eventually promote a framework which incorporates productive pursuit of group and individual goals and openness promotes peace as well. What I Learnt Through this assignment, the intricacies of open source software and the implications of openness in the software industry was clearly understood by me. The world is becoming more and more complex, and software and social engineering has become part of our lives. Companies are learning to integrate openness in institutions, and discouraging standards and products which prevent a central control of a vision. I also learnt from this assignment that social processing and openness works much better for software companies and hardware companies than a technocracy which is centrally administered. Human laws, software and other protocols as well as government are just means for progress and happiness of the society. Thus by supporting openness in spheres such as software purchases and hardware purchases of companies in particular, companies are actually supporting open societies which are not attached to any particular protocol or laws. While writing this essay, it became clear to me that the concepts of freedom and openness are major issues which technological companies encounter today. It was not very easy to capture the benefits and detriments of open source software, but with the help of a few valuable books from the library and a handful of online journals, discussing the topic became easier for me. Cited References 1. R. van Wendel de Joode, Protecting The Virtual Commons,New York: Asser Press, 2003 2. Brian Kahin and Janet Abbate, Standards Policy For Information Infrastructure, Cambridge: MIT Press , 1995 3. Manfred Nagl, Building Tightly Integrated Software Development Environments, New York: Springer , 1996 4. Andrea Omicini,Coordination Of Internet Agents: Models, Technologies, And Applications, New York: Springer, 2001 5. National Research Council (U.S.), Software For Dependable Systems: Sufficient Evidence? National Academies Press 2007 6. Darren Wershler-Henry, Free as in Speech and Beer: Open Source,Peer-to-Peer and the Economics of the Online Revolution. New York: Prentice Hall,2002 7. Sam Williams, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2002. 8. Oliver Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. New York: Free Press, 1985. 9. G.K. Zipf, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1949. 10. Eric S Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar. New York: O’Reilly, 2001. 11. Jan Sandred, Managing Open Source Projects. New York: Wiley, 2001. Read More