Open-source is a very important topic that every software engineer should know about. By the end of reading this post, you’ll know what the popular term open-source means, potentially start using open-source software and understand the importance of open-source.
Table Of Contents
The basics
Let’s start with what the actual defenition is of open-source, basically when something is open-source it means that anyone can see the code that makes that product, and anyone can contribute to it as well. Anyone can see the code, modify, and inspect the code.
Actual Picture of an Open Source User:
Why Open Source?
- Open source ensures that the software that you use is secure and private (or easy to know if it’s not),
- Open source allows any bug to be easily detected and fixed a lot faster.
- Everyone has different points of view of things, open source allows millions of developers from all around the world to contribute to their favourite software’s code.
BTW: this website is open-source so feel free to contribute to it! You don’t need to know how to code, even a simple typo fix can help!
What is wrong with closed software (proprietary software)
First of all, you have no idea how much data they are stealing from you, and how much they know about you. Since the code is not available to the public security bugs (and other bugs as well) might go un-noticed for a long time which can lead to very security hazardous bugs being abused.
Popular Open Source Software:
So you want to start using open source software? Well here are a few software that can help you get started!
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