The objective of this repository is to help you appreciate open source software and contribute towards it's development and maintenance.
Open source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify and enhance.
Open Source projects, products, or initiatives embrace and celebrate principles of open exchange, collaborative participation, rapid prototyping, transparency, meritrocracy and community-oriented development.
For example, Ubuntu Linux is an open-source operating system. You can download Ubuntu, create as many copies as you want, and give them to your friends.
You can install Ubuntu on an unlimited number of your computers. You could also download the source code for a program in Ubuntu and modify it, creating your own customized version of that program. Open-Source licenses all allow you to do this modifications, while closed-source licenses place restrictions on you.
Chrome, VLC media player, Android and Linux are some popular open-source software, while Micosoft Windows or Mac OS are probably the most popular examples of closed-source software.
Unlike open-source software, in proprietary software, the source-code can only be modified by the individual or organization who created it.
The owner of the software holds intellectual property rights of the source code exclusively.
Unlike open-source software, the internal structure of proprietary software is not exposed and the restrictions are imposed upon the users by the End User License Agreement(EULA), the coditions which are to be legally followed by the end users regrading the software
Examples of proprietary software include Windows, WhatsApp, Call of Duty(game)
Source code is the fundamental component of a computer program that is created by a programmer. It can be read and easily understood by a human being. When a programmer types a sequence of python language statements into VS Code and saves the sequence as a text file, the text file is said to contain the source code.
Check out this video to understand more on source code WhatIs_SourceCode
| Open Source Software | Proprietary Software |
|---|---|
| Anyone can access, inspect, modify | Only the owner holds the legal property rights of |
and redistrbute the source code. the source code can access it.
|The project is managed by an open source | The project is manged by a closed group of individuals or | community of developers and programmers. team that developed it.
|It provides better flexibility which means | There is a very limited scope of innovation with the | more freedom which encourages innovation. restrictions and all.
From a big picture point of view, the basics of a decision to adopt one over the the other is an example of the classic tradeoff between flexibility and usability. Open source software is more flexible but requires more effort to use, whereas the opposite is true for proprietary software.