January 17th, 2012
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| My Ubuntu 11.10 Desktop |
Open Source is when a product (software, creative content..) is available for the masses to freely modify and/or redistribute, under the same minimum conditions on which it was obtained (i.e. when you redistribute an open sourced software for example, those you are giving it to must enjoy at the very least the same rights you had in modifying and redistributing it). What is meant by freely however is freedom, and not necessarily cost-less.
This status is guaranteed by what is known as a license, or a form of public contract that states the terms under which you may use the product. The mostly used software licenses for example are the GNU General Public License, under which are Android and Linux, The Apache License, and content licenses include the Creative Commons Attribution in its most liberal forms, like the one under which Wikipedia is licensed, since more restrictive forms of it also exist.
How is Open Source important?
Whether in software or content, open sourcing was the main drive in the great leap in computers technology and information availability in general that the world has seen in the past three decades. Linux for example, an open-source Operating System (that's like Windows on PCs), powers electronics from calculators, to washing machines, to full-blown servers, and of course normal computers. Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora and other variations (called distros) are available to download and install -and tweak -for free (for instance I replaced Windows XP with Linux Mint on my old Pentium IV/256MB RAM desktop to bring it back to life, and have Ubuntu alongside Windows 7 on my laptop). This big availability allows for a concerted development of people all around the world, whereby each contribution constitutes a building block to which others might add. In an ideal world, each person would be paying back for what he's getting by contributing in his own way to the global community, or even civilization.
Why exactly am I wasting your time with this?
It is very important to push for openness especially in software, after all, the huge improvements seen in the World Wide Web today are in fact due to the open standards made by the W3C to HTML and the unbelievable possibilities it now presents to web developers. And although the former example might not exactly apply in this case, the effect of open-source software on our lives is undeniably enormous, whether in Linux as I mentioned above, or even Android, which is proving by the day to be the most popular mobile Operating System. Aside from the ideological talk, there's now consumer-oriented (free xD) open-source software that is available out there, and that is getting increasingly easy for the none-techy persons (yay you! :P) to use that you should be aware of (e.g. the latest versions of Ubuntu).
Finally, I'd like to draw your attention to the big SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) debate that is happening in the U.S., and that is threatening the basic structure of the Internet as we know it, and would encourage you to know more about it, especially with the planned blackout of Wikipedia and Reddit (among others) tomorrow in protest of it.