Answering The Question: What Does Open Source Really Mean?

Most people out there that think "open source" is synonymous with "freeware".

Not really.

Taken literally, open source is a set of principles on how to write software, with the full source code for said software openly available to you, the user.

Freeware (whether ad-supported or not) can be closed source. Just because an app is free doesn’t mean you can hack it. A good example of this is a from-service instant messenger program. Sure, you can freely download and use the Windows Live Messenger software, but can you get the source code and hack your own version of it? No. If it were open source, you could.

More internet companies are releasing development kits (a.k.a SDKs) and open source architectures because it promotes innovation in the way things are done on the internet.

As it is painfully obvious to many, the closed source model just doesn’t work anymore; In-house development teams in large corporations simply cannot work as fast as the collective community of the internet can, and when progress is blocked it serves to do nothing but anger consumers in the end.

A classic example of this is Apple and the iPhone. Apple is relentless in "bricking" phones that have source-style hacked apps in it. The fact of the matter is that there are enough programmers that can make that phone ten times better than it is if they were allowed to, but they’re not. When Apple says "Hang on! We’ve got an SDK coming.. wait! Please!", the source hackers say "No. You’re too slow. Get in the game or we’ll walk all over you" – and they do.

As internet programmers have known for a very long time, trying things in beta (or even alpha) stages in public view is truly the only way to give software a true shakedown. You have to toss the whatever-it-is out there and purposely try to break it. It if does, watch what breaks, fix it up and release an update. If it doesn’t, you’ve got yourself a good product that you can continue to improve upon.

Would WordPress have ever caught on as closed source paid software? Not a chance. You can say the same for phpBB, Miranda and many other widely used open source apps.

Want to know the best example of all?

The internet itself.

The vast majority of servers run on Linux and Unix. The super-big internet companies custom write their own Unix OSes just to handle the monster traffic they receive every second of every day. The open source of *nix is what allows you to do what you will on the internet.

Were it not for open source, it’s a good bet the internet wouldn’t be even a thousandth as large as it is today.

What does open source really mean? You’re experiencing it right now.