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Advantages of open source software

Motivations for using and developing open source software are mixed, ranging from philosophical and ethical reasons to pure practical issues. In this subsection, some of the most widely proposed practical advantages will be introduced. For a discussion on some of the ethical issues (which is not covered in this document), refer to [25].

Usually, the first perceived advantage of open source models is the fact that open source software is made available gratis or at a low cost. But this characteristic is not exclusive to open source software, and several proprietary software products are made available in similar ways (a prominent case could be Microsoft's Internet Explorer). What really distinguishes open source software from software available without fee is the combination of effects due to the characteristics discussed in section 3.1. All of them combined produce a synergistic impact which is the cause of the real advantages of the open source model. Let us provide some more detail on how do these characteristics turn into advantages:

The issue about non-exclusive rights on the software, which has just being mentioned, deserves some more attention. When no one holds exclusive rights on a given code (sometimes mentioned as ``life or death rights''), several traditional problems of the proprietary software model can be overcome:


next up previous contents
Next: Perceived disadvantages of open Up: Development models Previous: Developers motivation   Contents
Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona
2000-04-24