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The most notable advantage of any open source software is the cost. All open source software cost lot less, if not free then closed source proprietary software. Unlike other types of software open source software gives pure freedom to its users.
Just because Open Source software are free doesn’t mean it is not as good as the similar paid software. Though proprietary software industries doesn’t like open source software because it takes away their profit, even they sometimes use open source software for their software development. Microsoft, the largest software industry, uses Open-Source software for development according to Wheeler’s paper (Wheeler, 2007). In fact the most popular IDE, the software that’s used application development, such as NetBeans and Eclipse are open source which are used widely by both paid and free software developers (Kerner, 2006).
Software programmers not only benefits from using free open source IDEs but gives a wealth of experience for free. Open source projects are sometimes run by community or “forum” and experienced community member usually shares their knowledge. According to survey done on SourceForge, one of the largest open source software community, 29% of open source software community are there for the soul purpose of learning and 25% for work needs and professional status (Wheeler, 2007). In terms of experience open source software developers have average of impressive 11 years of experience and average age of only of 28 (Wheeler, 2007). From my personal experience, I learned java without any school knowledge of programing from how installs IDE to write programs on android platform from an open source software community. Even just by looking at the source code of a program has helped me to write complex program code in an hour, which that would take me months if I had learned from the books.
Open source software should be the only way software is developed because of cost, reliability and security. In the past open source software development has helped produce high quality and reliable software quickly and inexpensively for industries including in health industry (Reynolds, 2011). Wheeler suggested in his research that since open source software are product of diverse collaboration with different experience, it is flexible and more reliable (Wheeler, 2007). Also collaboration in development of open source results in more secure software. As more minds are involved in finding all the little loop holes in the software. Android OS for example took advantage of open source software development and became leading operating system in portable devices as of now (Kerner, 2006). Open source software development is the “way to go” for future software development.
Open source is a gift that keeps on giving to everyone. Open source software not only gives benefits to its users but also the rival software industries. Today it is possible to pirate almost any software someone if has basic knowledge of how to search the internet. The number one reason why people pirate software is because it costs money. In my opinion a very few people would download pirated 3 GB version of Microsoft office 2010 for hours with risk of having virus, spyware, worm and chance that this version doesn’t even work, when instead they can get OpenOffice.org for free. Since Open source software gives users alternative choices for free it should reduce, if not, stop software piracy.