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I pledge on my honor that i have not violated the Honor Code on this project. Akil sharp
I pledge on my honor that i have not violated the Honor Code on this project. Will Abbot
Open-source software is characterized as software to which everyone has
freedom of access to the source code and the legal ability to modify
and redistribute the software. The Open Source Initiative is
considered the authority on open-source and lists ten requirements that
must be met in order for software to be considered truly open-source
Opensource.org.
This model of freedom of use, which engenders a collaborative style of
production (see methodology and innovation), stands in contrast with
and philosophical opposition to traditional proprietary software
companies such as Microsoft and Apple. These companies utilize a
more traditional top-down business model in which a large company with
well-defined employee roles creates a product, patents it, and sells
the product to consumers, providing neither the source code nor
permission to modify or redistribute. Apple, in fact, is known
for aggressively shutting off iPhones that people have attempted to
“jailbreak,” which usually involves modifying it to run on a different
network.
In the debate over which style of production is better, there is an
irreconcilable philosophical divide between the two camps that makes
reasoned debate more difficult. Proponents of open-source believe
strongly in the freedom of use that is the core reason for the model of
production and distribution in the first place. Proprietary
software proponents, on the other hand, feel that profit is the bottom
line, and open-source by definition severely limits profits.
In order to reasonably debate the merits of open-source on this
website, we are going to ignore the philosophical underpinnings of the
movement except when they directly affect the proficiency of the
software. Instead, we are going to evaluate open-source purely on
its merits for producing quality software in comparison to traditional
proprietary software quality.
Our thesis is that open-source, while it has its inherent shortcomings,
is perfectly capable of achieving the same and in some cases greater
quality than proprietary software. However, we also acknowledge
that the functionality of open-source methodology on the whole is
improved by the existence of proprietary software companies.
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