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For the specific comparison of Linux and Windows, see Comparison of Windows and Linux.
Open source - the software development model used by the free and open source software (FOSS) movement - and closed source (or proprietary software) are two approaches to the development, control and commercialization of computer software.
[edit] BackgroundUnder the closed source model, source code must be hidden from the public and competitors who might otherwise reproduce, study or modify the code, either to resell the product, learn from the product or for other reasons. Software companies that follow the closed source model see it as a way to protect their products from software piracy or misuse, from reverse engineering and duplication, and to maintain competitive advantage and vendor lock-in. Closed source software usually is developed and maintained by a team who produces their product in a compiled executable state, which is what the market is allowed access to. Microsoft, the owner and developer of Windows and Microsoft Office, along with other major software companies, have long been proponents of this business model. The FOSS model allows for any user to view and modify a product's source code. Organizations and individuals that adhere to this model, such as Canonical Ltd. and the Mozilla Foundation, believe that the benefit that they gain from improvements to their software provided by the community of software developers is more important than protecting their competitive advantage. Common advantages cited by proponents for having such a structure are expressed in terms of trust, acceptance, teamwork and quality.[1] Most FOSS is licensed under what is often termed a "copyleft" license[citation needed], a term which emphasizes the license's reversal of the principles of copyright. A traditional license is used to limit freedoms, which the free software movement considers essential, the "four software freedoms",[2] taking them away from the users either completely ("you may not distribute the software") or partially ("you can use the software for an evaluation period of 30 days; after that you must either pay a license registration fee or discontinue the software"). By contrast a copyleft license protects the "four software freedoms" by explicitly granting them and then explicitly prohibiting anyone to strip them away when redistributing the package or reusing the code in it to make derivative works. Some licenses grant the four software freedoms but allow redistributors to remove them if they wish. Such licenses are sometimes called permissive software licenses.[3] An example of such a license is the BSD license which allows derivative software to be distributed as closed source products, as long as they give credit to the original designers. FOSS can and has been commercialized, both by purely FOSS companies such as Red Hat and more traditional software companies such as IBM and Novell. The archetypal example is the Linux operating system. [edit] Commercialization
[edit] Proprietary softwareThe primary business model for closed-source software involve the use of constraints on what can be done with the software and the restriction of access to the original source code. Software produced in this fashion can be sold commercially because end-users are not allowed to redistribute the software and are not allowed to modify the software, by law. This can result in a form of imposed artificial scarcity on a product that is otherwise very easy to copy and redistribute. The end result is that an end-user is not actually purchasing software, but purchasing the right to use the software. To this end, the source code to closed-source software is considered a trade secret by its manufacturers. In addition, copyright laws are put into place to protect the software legally, and technological measures such as digital rights management are programmed into the software to prevent copying/redistribution that would otherwise be illegal. [edit] FOSSFOSS methods, on the other hand, typically don't limit the use of software in this fashion. Instead, the revenue model is based mainly on support services. Canonical Ltd. is one such company that gives its software away freely, but charges for support services. The source code of the software is usually given away, and pre-compiled binary software frequently accompanies it for convenience. As a result, the source code can be freely modified. However, there can be some license-based restrictions on re-distributing the software. Generally, software can be modified and re-distributed for free, as long as credit is given to the original manufacturer of the software. In addition, FOSS can generally be sold commercially, as long as the source-code is provided. There are a wide variety of free software licenses that define how a program can be used, modified, and sold commercially (see GPL, LGPL, and BSD-type licenses). FOSS may also be funded through donations. The Wikimedia Foundation (publisher of Wikipedia) is one such organization (although they are also partially funded through grants, sponsorships, and brand merchandising). [edit] Handling CompetitionOpen-source software vendors generally allow, and even depend on, third-parties to modify and improve their software. In this way, a sort of feedback-loop is generated:
This model has proved somewhat successful, as witnessed in the Linux community. There are numerous GNU/Linux distributions available, but a great many of them are simply modified versions of some previous version. For example, Fedora Linux, Mandriva Linux, and PCLinuxOS are all derivatives of an earlier product, Red Hat Linux. In fact, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is itself a derivative of Fedora Linux. This is an example of one vendor creating a product, allowing a third-party to modify the software, and then creating a tertiary product based on the modified version. All of the products listed above are currently produced by rather successful software service companies. Operating systems built on the Linux kernel are available for a wider range of processor architectures than Microsoft Windows, including PowerPC and SPARC. None of these can match the sheer popularity of the x86 architecture, nevertheless they do have significant numbers of users; Windows remains unavailable for these alternative architectures, although there have been such ports of it in the past. The most obvious complaint against FOSS revolves around the fact that making money through some traditional methods, such as the sale of the use of individual copies and patent royalty payments, is much more difficult and sometimes impractical with FOSS. Moreover, many see the introduction of FOSS as damaging to the market for commercial software.[who?] Most software development companies sell licenses to use individual copies of software as their primary source of income, using a combination of copyright, patent, trademark and trade secret laws (collectively called intellectual property rights laws).[citation needed] Fees from sale and licensing of commercial software are the primary source of income for companies that sell software. Open source software has a large number of alternative funding streams, which are actually better-connected to the real costs of creating and maintaining software[citation needed]. After all, the cost of making a copy of a software program is essentially zero, so per-use fees are perhaps unreasonable. At one time, open-source software development was almost entirely volunteer-driven, and although this is true for many small projects, many alternative funding streams have been identified and employed for FOSS:
Increasingly, FOSS is developed by commercial organizations. In 2004, Andrew Morton noted that 37,000 of the 38,000 recent patches in the Linux kernel were created by developers directly paid to develop the Linux kernel. Many projects, such as the X Window System and Apache, have had commercial development as a primary source of improvements since their inception. This trend has accelerated over time[citation needed]. There are some who counter that the commercialization of FOSS is a poorly devised business model because commercial FOSS companies answer to parties with opposite agendas. On one hand commercial FOSS companies answer to volunteers developers, who are difficult to keep on a schedule, and on the other hand they answer to shareholders, who are expecting a return on their investment. Often FOSS development is not on a schedule and therefore it may have an adverse effect on a commercial FOSS company releasing software on time.[4] Additionally, FOSS programmers may have non-financial reasons for developing software. An analogy is that of Wikipedia, where people contribute without expecting compensation. [edit] End-user supportComputer software is complex enough that users frequently need help with it even after they have got it set up and working to begin with. Software also invariably has bugs in it, which may adversely impact the users' ability to get work done and so need to be fixed. A user may also see areas in which the functionality of the software may be improved, to help not just that user but others as well. Closed-source software vendors typically provide a "one-stop shop" for all support matters: since the vendor developed the software (and appropriately licensed any included components that were developed by others), the vendor also provides all necessary support functions. Nobody else can provide the level of support that the original vendor does, simply because nobody else has the requisite access to the source code (not just to understand how it works, but to make modifications and fix bugs). Open-source offers an alternative model, where access to the source code permits multiple alternative support organizations. It is often said that the more eyes looking for bugs reduce them. FOSS proponents also argue that with ready access to the source code, any programmer can find a bug or shortcoming in the software.[citation needed] Bug fixes may be faster for FOSS projects.[5] [edit] InnovationOpen-source software has often been accused of being more derivative than innovative. This is true to some extent, mostly in the desktop arena. For example, GIMP is in many ways a reinvention of the functionality of Photoshop, while OpenOffice.org is primarily designed as a plug-compatible replacement for Microsoft Office. Many of the largest well-known FOSS projects are either legacy code (e.g., FreeBSD or Apache) developed a long time ago independently of the free software movement, or by companies like Netscape (which open-sourced its code with the hope that they can compete better), or by companies like MySQL which use FOSS to lure customers for its more expensive licensed product. However, it is notable that most of these projects have seen major or even complete rewrites (in the case of the Mozilla and Apache 2 code, for example) and do not contain much of the original code. However, one should not overlook the many innovations that have come, and continue to come, from the open-source world:
[edit] Integration and overall "feel"When people compare the user experience with using Microsoft Windows versus typical GNU/Linux distributions as a desktop system, they generally agree that Windows works in a more seamless fashion.[citation needed] Every bit of the system was produced by one company[citation needed], so naturally the parts work together well[citation needed]. A typical GNU/Linux distro, on the other hand, is a combination of pieces from a large number of independent groups: the Linux kernel itself, basic operating system infrastructure from the GNU Project, basic GUI functions from X.Org on top of which one may run window managers or alternatively more elaborate GUI environments such as GNOME or KDE, and so on. But on the other hand, all the different open-source groups have a strong interest in having their projects work well together. They achieve this[citation needed] by having a fondness for open interoperability standards[citation needed], such as those promoted by Freedesktop.org and the Linux Standard Base. In versions of Windows Installer bundled with versions of Windows prior to XP and 2003, MSI patches are applied to software products as a monolithic whole:[8]
Most GNU/Linux distributions, as well as the BSD operating systems, on the other hand, include package management systems as standard. The various components of the installation are separated into individual packages, with clearly-defined dependencies between them. An attempt to upgrade a package on which another package depends will trigger a message to that effect, perhaps with an offer to automatically upgrade the latter package as well. Two packages that do not depend on each other can be independently upgraded, and if a problem is revealed with the new version of one of them, it can be independently reverted, regardless of the order in which the two were upgraded. Since the package management systems are open-source and public, it is straightforward for third parties to set up additional package repositories (such as Packman for SUSE Linux) that integrate cleanly with the original vendor/developer provided ones. A complication arises from the abundance of alternate free-software programs to meet a given need. For example, multimedia frameworks like GStreamer, Xine and Mplayer compared to the one centralised API, DirectShow, on Windows. In Windows, any media software can play any file format as long as the appropriate DirectShow codecs have been installed. In GNU/Linux, the appropriate codec must support not only the correct file format, but also the right framework: codecs for one framework are not compatible with another. This can lead to an inconsistent user experience, where some player software can play certain files, but other software cannot. [edit] Business modelsIn its 2008 Annual Report, Microsoft stated that FOSS business models challenge its license-based software model and that the firms who use these business models do not bear the cost for their software development. The company also stated in the report:[9][10]
[edit] Empirical comparisonA 2004 empirical comparison between open-source and closed source projects showed:[11]
[edit] QuotesFrom the European Parliament investigation into the Echelon system (05/18/2001):
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