A low-cost and robust microscope hardware trigger interface board

Abstract. Open source software could emerge thanks to the development of the Internet, development tools, and computer literacy in general. The most attractive parameter of open source GIS software is a free license. The rapid pace of development, attracting developers from all over the world and high modularity stimulate the innovative nature of open source software. Here, the introduction of new technologies does not meet with opposition, but rather welcomes. These circumstances, as well as elucidation of the functional capabilities of such GIS, become very important in the search for means of providing the educational process with modern GIS software, which is traditionally an expensive proprietary software. Goal: Analysis of up-to-date GIS software protection and visual accessibility of the QGIS system in the first place with studying geoinformation systems.Quantum GIS (QGIS) is an open source software (GIS) geographic information system (GIS). Open software is one of the most interesting technological phenomena of the present, owing to its rapid growth in the development of the Internet, development tools and computer literacy in general. The key role in the creation, development and support of open source software is played, as a rule, by the community of developers forming around individual software products: commercial companies, groups of enthusiasts or research organizations. The term open source was proposed by Bruce Perens, one of the key leaders in the Open Source and Free Software movement, cofounder with Eric Raymind in 1998 of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), an open source software development organization that promotes and provides technical open source support. This open source term is used by OSI to determine whether a software license complies with open source standards. The main features of open source software as defined include free distribution, accessible source code, permission to modify this source code. At the same time, even successful open source software products require companies on the market ready to provide technical support and advice on issues related to the selected products. However, the number of companies providing support services for open source GIS software is still relatively small.

This paper investigates competition between open source and proprietary software. Open source software is divided into two types: free open source and commercial open source. Free open source software can be available from the not-for-profit community, and Commercial open source software is software product based on free open source software. The usability of both free and commercial open source software is assumed to be inferior to proprietary software. It finds that: (i) when commercial open source vendor faces competition from proprietary software and free open source software, it may still be able to obtain profits; (ii) commercial open source vendor's pricing (resp. share or profit) may still be much lower (resp. less) than that of proprietary vendor even if its software functionality is not inferior to proprietary software; (iii) commercial open source vendor's pricing and profit may not increase as its software usability increases; (iv) proprietary software's price decreases with the usability of commercial open source software. Index Terms—proprietary software, open source software, price competition, software features, software usability

High-throughput phenotyping.

On the middle ground between open source and commercial software - the case of the Newbler program

This study investigates how open source software can play influences on the quality choices of commercial open source and proprietary software providers. It considers two types of open source software: community open source and commercial open source, and assumes that the usability of commercial open source software is better than community open source substitute but inferior to proprietary substitute. It finds that: (i) the functional quality of proprietary software decreases as the functional quality of community open source software increases, but it may increase as the usability of community open source software increases; (ii) even if commercial open source producers must open the source codes of their quality contributions, they have incentive to enhance the functional quality of community open source software; (iii) the influence of community open source software’s quality (usability or functional quality) or commercial open source software’s usability on the functional quality of commercial open source and proprietary software may be not same; (iv) the appearance of commercial open source software may lead to proprietary software producers lowering their software functional quality.

Commentary: Open-source hardware for research and education

By modifying Hotelling model, we research the differentiation decisions between open source software (OSS) and proprietary software (PS) and the location decisions of proprietary software when open source software and proprietary software coexist in a software market. In this paper, we assume proprietary software producer pursues profit maximization and open source software is freely available. The study finds that: (i) Higher (resp. lower) the OSS's learning cost, smaller (resp. greeter) the software differentiation between OSS and PS; (ii) the compatibility degree between open source and proprietary software affects software differentiation; (iii) how the network externality and OSS user's software development skills affect the software differentiation decisions and the location decisions of proprietary software depends on the compatibility degree between PS and OSS.

Both the free and open source software (FOSS) as well as the distributed digital manufacturing of free and open source hardware (FOSH) has shown particular promise among scientists for developing custom scientific tools. Early research found substantial economic savings for these technologies, but as the open source design paradigm has grown by orders of magnitude it is possible that the savings observed in the early work was isolated to special cases. Today there are examples of open source technology for science in the vast majority of disciplines and several resources dedicated specifically to publishing them. Do the tremendous economic savings observed earlier hold today? To answer that question, this study evaluates free and open source technologies in the two repositories compared to proprietary functionally-equivalent tools as a function of their use of Arduino-based electronics, RepRap-class 3-D printing, as well as the combination of the two. The results of the review find overwhelming evidence for a wide range of scientific tools, that open source technologies provide economic savings of 87% compared to equivalent or lesser proprietary tools. These economic savings increased slightly to 89% for those that used Arduino technology and even more to 92% for those that used RepRap-class 3-D printing. Combining both Arduino and 3-D printing the savings averaged 94% for free and open source tools over commercial equivalents. The results provide strong evidence for financial support of open source hardware and software development for the sciences. Given the overwhelming economic advantages of free and open source technologies, it appears financially responsible to divert funding of proprietary scientific tools and their development in favor of FOSH. Policies were outlined that provide nations with a template for strategically harvesting the opportunities provided by the free and open source paradigm.

Over the last five years, open source software has moved into mainstream areas such as Internet and financial applications, with software such as Linux and Apache Web Server now supporting mission-critical operations. Open source software can offer both cost reductions and improvements in software quality. However, the uptake by incumbent telecommunications providers has been virtually zero, instead focusing on major commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) packages, due to a mixture of prior strategic investments and perceptions over open source risks. This paper addresses the scope for use of open source software in telecommunications operational support systems (OSS). Firstly, the technical scope for open source software is addressed, covering the maturity of available open source software components, and the ways in which these components can have an impact on OSS software architecture. Secondly, the commercial aspects are presented, covering benefits, commercial models and risks. An OSS life cost comparison of open source versus COTS software is included. Thirdly, a test OSS created by BT using primarily open source software, combined with OSS standards to provide a minimum cost base, is presented and analysed. The paper concludes with a statement on the potential for the use of open source software in OSS, and suggests possible next steps.

Guest Editorial Open source software: investigating the software engineering, psychosocial and economic issues

The Open Source movement has touched almost every sphere of software technology that we know today. The OSS/BSS world also has seen significant application of Open Source software into their products. Major carriers and service providers are still wary of migrating to Open Source software for critical applications though most of them are involved with Open Source initiatives in one form or the other. For most carriers and service providers the top-of-the-mind issues are scalability, security and performance. Some key questions raised by them are, • How does Open Source give / not give competitive advantage? • Is Open Source the best path to cheaper software? • Are Open Source and collaborative development necessarily tied together? • Is Open Source a way of reducing discontinuities that arise when conventional products leapfrog one another? • What are the relative lifetime costs of Open Source and conventional software? • Is it robust enough to handle my mission-critical applications? • What about service support once I migrate to an open source platform? Though Open Source software is much less expensive and tests have proven their efficacy, system integrators have not rushed headlong into the open software fray. Most SI's, though excited about the Open Source revolution, are still waiting and watching where this initiative is headed. This panel discussion focuses on some of the key issues and advantages of Open Source platforms in business impacting applications such as OSS/BSS solutions.

Open source and proprietary software firms are no longer polar opposites on the business landscape. In the decade in which open source software has become a practical alternative to proprietary products, there has been a so-called move to the middle. Proprietary firms have begun to embrace open source development methods and products, while open source firms have resorted to traditional methods of generating revenues from free software. Further, in many important areas the two classes of firm have learned to co-operate as well as compete with one another. This article describes the evolution of co-operation and competition between open source and proprietary software product firms, focusing on the operating system, middleware, and application layers of the software stack.

The rivalry between developers of open source and proprietary software encourages open source developers to court users and respond to their needs. If the open source developer wants to promote her own open source standard and solutions, she may choose liberal license terms such as those of the Berkeley Software Distribution as proprietary developers will then find it easier to adopt her standard in their products. If she wants to promote the use of open source software per se, she may use more restrictive license terms such as the General Public License to discourage proprietary appropriation of her effort. I show that open source software that comes late into a market will be less likely than more innovative open source software to be compatible with proprietary software, but is also more likely to be made more accessible to inexperienced users.

With the popularity of open source software (OSS) as an alternative to proprietary software (PS), proprietary-software firms such as IBM and Microsoft started to embrace this new paradigm during the past decades. We analyze how firms choose the software development strategy between OSS and PS, by constructing a duopoly model in which consumers sequentially purchase software and complementary services in a market that exhibits an indirect network effect. We show that a PS firm may benefit from the presence of an OSS firm, and the software market can be dominated by a single OSS if the indirect network effect is weak and the cost saving effect of OSS is negligible. We also show that the market can support two OSS if the cost saving effect of OSS is sizeable, and two PS if firms can provide fully compatible services to competitor’s PS. Building upon the existing works that investigate the competition between PS and OSS, this study improves our understanding of the role of OSS in firm’s software development strategy and market equilibrium.

We have attempted to create affordable programmable logical controllers (PLC) that can be used to train millions of students in developing countries. Version 1 of the PLC is based on AtMega16 and costs 600 ($10). Using the free and open source software (FOSS) LD Micro, one can learn ladder logic. To enhance the capabilities, using Raspberry PI, Version 2 of the PLC, costing 1,500 ($25) is made. We can use this device with the FOSS OpenPLC to learn ladder logic. We can also learn function block based programming using the FOSS 4DIAC. As ladder logic and function block based programming are industrial standards, students trained using our approach will be useful to industry.