Open Source Software

Introduction:

The use of Open Source Software (OSS) has grown and continues to grow both in America and worldwide. Since its invention more and more people have been using it for various reasons. This paper gives a short explanation of what OSS is and what is the background of this software. Besides providing the history and background of Open Source software, the goal of this research paper is to show the legal, ethical, and security problems of Open Source software in our environment, using GNU/Linux as an example. Another purpose is to list the benefits of Open Source Software that affect small businesses, home users, and uses for academic purposes.

Background:

Open Source Software is free software which is composed of open-source codes and is available for use in program applications (Phyllis, 2006). The free software movement is not about software that doesn't cost anything. The movement is about the people's freedom to use software as they want, modify the software to their needs and distribute changes to others. Free is an abbreviation of freedom (Beaton and Sweeny, 2001). Nearly thirty years ago Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation to promote free software under the General Public License (GPL). In an interview with David Taber in 2006 Richard Stallman said: “I decided to develop an operating system that would be free software, would run on modern computers, and be portable.” Because he was passionate about providing the society with free software he dropped out of MIT and started working on GNU project in January, 1984. Through the years he developed most parts of the system, but in 1992 added a program called Linux to the GNU project, which made it complete and ready to use. He named it GNU/Linux, however nowadays it is most commonly known just by Linux (Taber, 2006).

Potential Benefits:

OSS has three potential benefits. According to Phyllis Walker one of the main benefits of OSS is that many professional computer users can read, improve, and fix bugs within the source code. For example with Open Source Software companies can tailor it to their specific needs, because the source code is available to them. The second benefit of open source is cost efficiency. Most of the OSS is cheaper than the proprietary software (Phyllis, 2006). The last advantage of OSS is that it has support and upgrade streams available. A good reason for people to use open source software such as GNU/Linux could be because of the following recent research that shows Linux's market share of the server market has reached approximately 24%, with 52% of business users replacing Windows servers with Linux servers (Kalinam and Czyzycki, 2005).

Legal issues:

Richard Stallman could not create the OSS because he had some issues with copyright; so he created copyleft. Copyright asks for the person not to share the software, which was a major problem for Richard Stallman because he wanted OSS be shared and modified by the users. To solve this problem he created the copyleft license. Richard Stallman (2006) said that copyleft is a technique for using copyright. According to George Pike (2002) a copyleft is a form of an intellectual property agreement, which permits any users to reproduce and modify the orginal creation, but at the same time develop new and different creations.

Ethical issues:

One of the ethical issues that one might notice is that as GNU/Linux was becoming popular, and when more and more people started using it, they did not realize that they were using GNU/Linux not just Linux. People began calling GNU/Linux system just by Linux. They gave all of the credits to the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, who just added that last missing part; whereas GNU group was the one who have worked on it for the past years. This act is ethically wrong, because both GNU and Linux teamed up to build this system, and both of their names should be used. This software is called GNU/Linux not just Linux.

Security issues:

Although most of the open source software has potential benefits, there are some security issues with OSS. Most of the OSS users might be concerned about the security of it because it is built by communities, because the source code is available for everyone, hackers and malicious users can access it as well. Another security issue might be that not all of the OSS has support. Meaning that when an OSS is hacked there is no specific person whom you could contact with to fix this problem. Therefore people should choose the OSS that has support line. 

Further Research:

Further research about this topic can be done on the differences between the proprietary companies and open source software. Another suggestion would be to take a specific OSS and analyze it and tell who uses that specific OSS and how it is created. Some OSS that are popular and that are widely used by college students are the following software: Apache HTTP server (web server), Blender (3D graphics and animation), DSpace (digital repository), EPrints (digital repository), The GIMP (image editor), and Mozilla Firefox which is a web browser (Metcalfe, 2005).

Conclusion:

There are many advantages of open source software, however there are some ethical, legal, and security problems with OSS. The ethical problem with OSS, such as GNU/Linux, would be the name recognition of the programmers of these systems. Linux is not the complete software that you could install to your PC; the complete name of the system is called GNU/Linux which is an OSS for modern computers. Another type of issue that businesses might come along with is the security issue of OSS. The security issue that OSS might have is that since anybody can modify it, hackers and malicious users can access and destroy the system, which makes it risky for businesses to use open source software (). Because of the legal issues that Dr. Stallman had with copyright he could not start working on his GNU project. Because of this issue copyleft was created, which nowadays is widely used. People should be supporters of OSS for several reasons. The most important reason is that OSS gives them the freedom of software that people deserve. Additionally OSS improves computer users intellectually. Users can be encouraged to learn how to fix problems themselves, because the source code is available for them.  

References 

Beaton, S., & Sweeny, L. J. (2001, Feb 21). History of hacking, part IV. Ripsaw.

Retrieved October 3, 2012, from http://search.proquest.com/docview/220513763?accountid=14541 

This article explains the importance of GNU tools in Linux. It highlights some of the facts why Linux became popular in the past years. The authors of this article are trying to persuade its readers to get OSS. They think open source software should be a lasting contribution to the hacker community.  

George, H. P. (2002). What is right about a copyleft? Information Today, 19(4), 22-24.

Retrieved October 3, 2012, from http://search.proquest.com/docview/214827282?accountid=14541

This source explains the difference between copyright and copyleft. The author gives specific examples of both of these copyrights and explains, in depth, what rights they give to users.

Kalina, I., & Czyzycki, A. (2005). The ins and outs of open source. Consulting to

 Management, 16(3), 41-46. Retrieved October 3, 2012, from http://search.proquest.com/docview/215900500?accountid=14541

  

The writers in this scholarly journal use question and answer method to convey their ideas. This source is very helpful, because it is straight to the point. It also gives the advantages and disadvantages of open source software.  

Metcalfe, R. (2005). OSS Watch - Examples of Open Source Software. OSS Watch - open

 source software advisory service. Retrieved October 4, 2012, from

http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/softwareexamples.xml

This is a website that gives examples of Open Source Software. Meanwhile this website helps the OSS users if they have any problem using the software.

Phyllis, L. W. (2006, OPEN-SOURCE FREE SOFTWARE: Benefits, features, and uses.

 Contract Management, 46, 18-22,24. Retrieved October 4, 2012, from http://search.proquest.com/docview/196310064?accountid=14541

This source gives a general overview of the history of OSS. It is a reliable source because it was published in National Contract Management Association magazine, which is one of the credible magazines.

States, i. p., & Privacy, p. i. (n.d.). Open source software security. ComputerWeekly.com

 Information Technology (IT) News, UK IT Jobs, Industry News. Retrieved October 4, 2012, from http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Open-source-software-security

This source discuses the security issues of free Open Source Software (Foss). At the end of the paper the writers discus the difference between Free Open Source Software and proprietary software. This website publishes weekly articles about different topics in different fields of computers.

Taber, D. (2006, Unleashing the freedom to share: An interview with free software

 innovator richard stallman. Peacework, 33, 12-13. Retrieved October 3, 2012, from http://search.proquest.com/docview/194479939?accountid=14541

This article is a valid source of information because it is an interview with the creator of the GNU project, Richard Stallman. In this interview Richard Stallman gives answers to some questions related to ethical issues of Open Source Software.