An important question may be on your mind: What is the benefit to the person or association when publishing its applications and tools in an open source?
In fact, there are several reasons that push people, institutions, and even governments to adopt open source applications . These reasons may be ethical or for the personal benefit of the individual or association.
Benefits for businesses
Utilizing programmers in higher value work
It is always said that all the easy problems have been solved in the open source application community, blogging tools, content management and operating systems are all built with high quality that rivals remainder of closed source solutions like Linux, or even solutions that dominated the market like WordPress CMS.
Instead of inventing the wheel and wasting time, you can use formerly created tools and solutions with high efficiency and totally free of charge, and you can invest time in solving previously unresolved problems, which gives more value to your association.
lower costs
Using open source applications reduces the monthly costs your association pays for closed source applications.
Linus’s law
“With enough eyes, all problems will be solved.”
Meaning provided there are a large number of programmers, most problems will be detected and fixed quickly.
That is why open source applications can produce more quality software than closed source applications because closed source applications will be exposed and developed by the company’s programmer team.
Open source applications give you three strengths:
- An possibility to benefit from highly experienced programmers from around the world, and the diversity of ideas proposed by programmers from different environments.
- The number of programmers involved in the project may reach a immense number.
- Open source applications are designed to suit wide use cases and not just specific cases by the manufacturer (plus the ability to modify the application to suit your own use).
Open source applications are the future
Numerous modern organizations rely on open source applications, and an increasing number of older organizations are starting to rely on open source applications, even Microsoft, which was a fierce hater of open source applications, began investing in open source applications and bought Github for billions of dollars.
Other large companies such as Adobe, IBM and SAP also contribute to the open source application community.
No need to wait for updates
It is normal to have errors and security problems in applications, these problems are eternal, but the advantage of open source applications is that you can start solving these problems immediately instead of writing to the application publisher and waiting for the next update.
Or even apply major tweaks to suit your needs.
modular design
Open source applications are Modularly Architected. By standard, we mean that the application is divided into several parts to suit different use cases of users, making the development and modification process of the application bendy.
Free company marketing
Companies contributing to open source applications have a positive reputation among users, especially users who work in the technical sector, and this reputation may attract highly skilled employees to work in your company.
Programmers can work on open source projects run by your company and experience the work surroundings before applying for the job, which increases the chance that they will apply for the job whether they like the work surroundings.
Benefits for individuals
way to memorize
Provided you are a programmer or aspire to be one, the open source application community is a brilliant and free way to learn and develop yourself.
You can choose a project you like and then read the documentation for that project, then you can work on reporting existing problems, suggesting modifications, working on existing problems, or even creating your own version of the project.
Marketing for yourself
Also, the open source community is a good way for companies to market themselves, like with programmers, companies will see your work and possibly even ask you to work with them.
Moreover, your account on a platform like Github is your commerce gallery, and numerous companies require your Github account to see your preceding work and its quality.
Hobby
The open source application community is full of hobbyists before, and it is a fun hobby that you can practice at any time you want and at the same time provide a benefit to the world.
moral incentives
free without restrictions
The freedom in open source applications includes four pillars: the freedom to use, the freedom to study and modify the application, the freedom to republish and distribute the application, and the freedom to publish and distribute your own modified version of the application.
Closed-source applications have a risk, as the user can be controlled or exploited by the publishing company and it is very common in our time to hear about applications that spy on their users or applications that block some content that opposes their ideology, and this topic is becoming increasingly important with the emergence of the “Internet of Things”.
Open source applications balance power and give freedom to users.
benefit and benefit
You must contribute to the open source community provided you benefit from it, the community is based on cooperation between all contributors, and if everyone takes what he needs without contributing, this community will disappear, so we have a moral duty to contribute to the community of open source applications.
Transparency
Governments’ reliance on technology is constantly increasing to organize the services they provide to citizens, and these services must be open source, in order to be sure that the algorithms behind those government services are not biased towards a particular group in society or that those algorithms do not contain any errors.
And when we talk about open source applications, we are not talking about the future. Open source applications play an important role at the present time and in more than one field.
