Open Source Software Development and Its Benefits

Emr Softwarecompany is restricted in its operations by that
Open Source Software (OSS) is software that issoftware.
available under a special license allowing everyone toWho Pays for Open Source Development?
download it for free and also access the programThe ability to customize software is critical to allow
code. This means that anyone is able to edit thean organization to continue to improve their business
program code and therefore customize the softwareprocesses, but how does a company afford to pay
for their own needs, and in some cases redistributefor such customizations?
the source code with different version and aOne of the side effects of allowing any user access
modified Change Log file.to the source code is that the cost of acquiring the
software in the first instance is massively reduced. In
The right to modify applications is in direct contrastmost cases the source code is available for no cost.
to the Closed Source Software model. In ClosedThis enables the user to divert resources normally
Source only the creator of the application has accessallocated to pay software license fees into enhancing
to the source code, and therefore, only the creatorthe software.
is able to modify the application. This limits theHere are a few facts to convince you that it most
customization of software and the bugs cannot becertainly does work:
fixed by common people or people who have- Around 70% of web sites are served by the Open
knowledge of how to change the source code toSource Apache HTTPD server.
meet their needs. As a result, the closed source- In a 2002 survey it was found over 31% of UK and
software does not become as much popular as thenearly 42% of German companies were using or
open source software.planning to use OSS.
Being able to change the way an Open Source- In 2001, Debian (an Open Source Operating
Software application operates is critical in manySystem), contained over 55 million lines of code and
business environments. No two businesses arewas estimated to have consumed over 14,000
identical and therefore it is unlikely that any one pieceperson years in development time. That is a
of software will satisfy the needs of all potentialdevelopment cost of around 1.89 Billion Dollars (US)
users. Without the ability to modify their software ayet it is still available with no license fees.