Direction of Open Source for OSS implementation

Sensible Open Source Licenses For Standards Development Organizations

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

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.

Open Source, Anarchy, and the Utopian Impulse

Introduction Perhaps the business case for adopting open source software is an easy sell. After all, the software is free, and can be simply downloaded from the Internet and installed or customized as needed. Organizations interested in reducing the licensing fees of proprietary software, while also avoiding the penalties and legal liabilities associated with their illegal use, can definitely consider open source software a plausible alternative. However, less obvious than the cost savings but equally important are the barriers ("hidden costs") of adopting open source software. Open source software has created considerable excitement in the business world over the last decade. These applications, designed by groups of volunteer software developers, have the potential to break the current dominance of proprietary software and restrictive licenses for many business applications, reduce software development time and improve software quality, and most importantly, bring much needed software applications within the reach of individuals and small businesses, who cannot otherwise afford such software. Further, unlike proprietary software, open source software applications make their source code available for free, which can be customized to fit the unique needs of specific organizations. Many organizations have caught on to open source software and realized significant cost savings in technology expenditure as a result. For instance, Cendant Travel Distribution Services replaced a $100 million mainframe system with a $2.5 million system running on 144 Linux servers. Amazon.com cut its technology expenditure from $71 million to $54 million by switching to open source applications. Sabre Holdings saved tens of millions of dollars by adopting MySQL, an open source database product. Though the basic open source software is free, the prospect of paid ancillary products and services such as hardware and consulting has motivated many erstwhile proprietary technology vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems to embrace open source software and offer value-added services based on such software. Table 1 shows an estimated range of the current global market share of several of today's open source software applications. This table shows that though the open source market is large and growing for some application domains such as Web server (such as Apache), server operating systems (such as Linux Server), database server (such as MySQL), electronic mail client (such as Sendmail), and Internet browser (such as Firefox), it is lagging behind its proprietary counterparts in other domains such as client operating systems (such as Linux Workstation), office productivity software (such as OpenOffice), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. This pattern suggests that there may be significant barriers to open source software adoption among some sectors of the user populations. It is widely believed that proprietary software vendors often use fear, uncertainty and doubt to undermine and cut the market potential of their open source competitors. The objective of this paper is to reduce that uncertainty via a candid discussion of the barriers confronting open source software adoption and potential remedies to those barriers. These barriers and their remedies, summarized in Table 2, are discussed in detail.

Commentary: Open-source hardware for research and education

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

Open Source and Proprietary Software: The Search for a Profitable Middle-Ground

Open Content Communities

Open Source Application is a concept of software development rather than a specific type of application. Information sharing is encouraged through open source software, which is seen as a strong and advantageous idea. The purpose of the study was to determine the impact of open source applications usage in teaching and learning of Computing Courses in the Institution of Higher Learning as well investigating the kinds of open source software's and accessibility that potential computing educators in the area under study are familiar with. The importance of this study, which examined Zetech University prospective computing teachers' use of open-source software in higher education, will give the university's administration and various departments inside knowledge of how familiar and knowledgeable these individuals are with open source software. By doing this, the authority will be able to identify their weaknesses and opportunities for improvement, such as Universities should replace proprietary software with open-source software to reap future benefits like license renewal and file upgrades. In the investigation, a mixed method approach was used. 180 staff members and students were purposefully chosen at random for the study at Zetech University, and a sample of 118 was taken. In the quantitative approach, the descriptive statistics were employed to display the distribution of scores using a few indices. Based on the findings 90.7% were familiar with open source software's while 9.3% were not familiar. 98.3% suggested that it was essential to use open source applications in teaching computing courses while 1.7% rejected the narrative. 71.2 % of the respondents were familiar with universities using open source software's in their Curriculums while 28% were not familiar with any. 46.6% of the respondents ascertained that the university has provided an environment to access open source applications,31.4% disagreed, while 14.4% were neutral. Universities should switch to open source software instead of proprietary software to save money on license renewal and upgrade fees, a position that was strongly supported by 38.1%, agreed by 40.7%, was neutral by 12.7%, and disagreed by 5.1% and 3.4%. The paradigm for education must change to Education 4.0 in order to give innovatively productive education. Faculty members and educators can employ a range of cutting-edge tools and technology to do this. These technologies can be used to track students' participation and engagement in the program both on and off campus with the help of IoT and ontology. Virtual learning environments can also be utilized in conjunction with different blended learning environments to accommodate a range of learner types. Practitioners must be aware of the potential negative effects of using open source software while developing a product in order to be ready for them, anticipate them, and take the required steps to overcome them. The institutions ought to be linked to websites which features a list of open source programs associated with many categories, including security, cloud computing, small enterprises, big data, games, etc. Aspiring computer science teachers' knowledge of open source programs will be improved as a result. This will enhance the open source software understanding of aspiring computer science teachers.

Open Source Application is a concept of software development rather than a specific type of application. Information sharing is encouraged through open source software, which is seen as a strong and advantageous idea. The purpose of the study was to determine the impact of open source applications usage in teaching and learning of Computing Courses in the Institution of Higher Learning as well investigating the kinds of open source software's and accessibility that potential computing educators in the area under study are familiar with. The importance of this study, which examined Zetech University prospective computing teachers' use of open-source software in higher education, will give the university's administration and various departments inside knowledge of how familiar and knowledgeable these individuals are with open source software. By doing this, the authority will be able to identify their weaknesses and opportunities for improvement, such as Universities should replace proprietary software with open-source software to reap future benefits like license renewal and file upgrades. In the investigation, a mixed method approach was used. 180 staff members and students were purposefully chosen at random for the study at Zetech University, and a sample of 118 was taken. In the quantitative approach, the descriptive statistics were employed to display the distribution of scores using a few indices. Based on the findings 90.7% were familiar with open source software's while 9.3% were not familiar. 98.3% suggested that it was essential to use open source applications in teaching computing courses while 1.7% rejected the narrative. 71.2 % of the respondents were familiar with universities using open source software's in their Curriculums while 28% were not familiar with any. 46.6% of the respondents ascertained that the university has provided an environment to access open source applications,31.4% disagreed, while 14.4% were neutral. Universities should switch to open source software instead of proprietary software to save money on license renewal and upgrade fees, a position that was strongly supported by 38.1%, agreed by 40.7%, was neutral by 12.7%, and disagreed by 5.1% and 3.4%. The paradigm for education must change to Education 4.0 in order to give innovatively productive education. Faculty members and educators can employ a range of cutting-edge tools and technology to do this. These technologies can be used to track students' participation and engagement in the program both on and off campus with the help of IoT and ontology. Virtual learning environments can also be utilized in conjunction with different blended learning environments to accommodate a range of learner types. Practitioners must be aware of the potential negative effects of using open source software while developing a product in order to be ready for them, anticipate them, and take the required steps to overcome them. The institutions ought to be linked to websites which features a list of open source programs associated with many categories, including security, cloud computing, small enterprises, big data, games, etc. Aspiring computer science teachers' knowledge of open source programs will be improved as a result. This will enhance the open source software understanding of aspiring computer science teachers.

Purpose – This study aims to explore the process of open source software (OSS) adoption in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and more specifically open source enterprise resource planning (ERP) as a “mission critical” OSS application in manufacturing. It also addresses the fundamental issue of ERP risk management that shapes this process. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is done through an interpretive case study of a small Canadian manufacturer that has adopted an open source ERP system. Findings – Interpreted in the light of the IT risk management, OSS and packaged application adoption literatures, results indicate that the small manufacturer successfully managed the adoption process in a rather intuitive manner, based on one guiding principle and nine practices. In analyzing the data, diffusion of innovation theory appeared to fit rather well with the situation observed and to offer rich insights to explain the mission-critical OSS adoption process. Research limitations/implications – A single case study of successful IT adoption should be eventually counterbalanced by future cases considered to be partial or total failures, using a wider multiple case study approach for comparative purposes. And this should include alternative theoretical interpretations and more detailed empirical work on the extent to which the distinctive features of OSS make its adoption more or less risk-laden. This initial effort should also be followed by further research on mission-critical OSS adoption in contexts other than SMEs (e.g. healthcare organizations) and other than ERP (e.g. customer-relationship management). Practical implications – This research confirms that open source is a credible alternative for SMEs that decide willingly or under external pressure to adopt a mission-critical system such as ERP. Moreover, it suggests that a high level of formalization is not always necessary. Originality/value – The authors argue that rich insights into the dynamics of the mission-critical OSS adoption process can be obtained by framing this process within an IT risk management context.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to educate the knowledge worker on the benefits of using open source software, and to demonstrate how open source methodology promotes the collaborative and innovative attributes of knowledge management.Design/methodology/approachThe author lists the open source initiative's definition for open source products, licensing information, the value of open source in a global economy, misconceived barriers to open source adoption, a functional comparison of open source and commercial software products, and web sites where open source products may be obtained.FindingsOpen source usage is prevalent throughout the world for governmental, business, educational, military, and space exploration purposes. Notwithstanding, some commercial enterprises such as the Microsoft Corporation have viewed the open source movement as a threat to profitability, citing alleged intellectual property infringement violations. However, other commercial entities such as IBM, Oracle, Novell, and Apple computer have embraced open source technology to conduct business operations as well as satisfy customer needs. Public appeal for open source products has been strong enough for Microsoft, through a recent public statement, to disclose that the firm wishes to “build a bridge” with the open source community, an apparent realization that open source is here to stay. The knowledge worker should understand that commercial and open source applications may coexist in the same IT environment.Originality/valueA knowledge enterprise's total cost of ownership (TCO) can be significantly reduced through the use of open source software, resulting in an improvement to overall performance attributed to the collaborative and innovative nature of the open source model. Enterprises can benefit by taking a closer look at how open source technology helps to meet organizational goals and objectives in the most efficient and effective manner available.

Something Happened on the Way to the ©

Today, Information and Communication Technology has provided us with an ability of flexibility and access to information and resources (Agarwal, Manjari, 2014). It has empowered the Library and Information Science community to adapt to the new open source software (OSS) tools and technologies in their day-to-day activities in their libraries. Development of OSS based on the sharing and collaborative improvement of software source code has a history that is essentially as long as software development itself. Open source initiative was formed in 1998 as an educational, advocacy and stewardship organisation at an important moment in the history of OSS and collaborative development. This study is aimed to study the different OSS of library digitisation in engineering college libraries of Karnataka, to Study the nature and type of open source digital library software used in engineering college libraries of Karnataka and to Study the areas of application of OSS in engineering college libraries of Karnataka. The investigation has conducted a survey among 147 engineering college librarians in the state of Karnataka on the above matters. The results are discussed under the categories such as status of library automation and digitisation, use of automation and digital library software, management of IT and network requirement of library, own digital library/institutional repository software, involvement in installation of OSS, involvement in installation of OSS, potential areas of adopting OSS in library and duration of OSS implementation in library.