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Open Source Software
Open Source Software (OSS), also known as freeware, is usually software available on the internet for free download for public or personal use. This movement started in 1983 and became more popular in 1998 as a group of individuals brought in the official name of freeware. It is used by companies to either market themselves or the product or just use it as a public opinion opportunity to improve and review new software ideas and concepts.
Since OSS or freeware are absolutely free, anyone can use it and distribute it to other people in the same manner as received, that is, free of cost. This method is used by software companies to successfully build new communication relations with companies and use the freeware as a base for training or making users using a certain type of software.
So what are the advantages of downloading these kinds of products? The themes that these software types are based on varies. It can range from photo editing all the way through to basic programming or even scrap booking. Such softwares come with no restrictions in the sense of usage and never require a license and therefore, can never be classified as pirated software. If later, the companies upgrade the software to license the product, the user can either stick to the freeware module or only pay for the upgraded version if they feel the need to do so.
As most open source software or freeware are usually used as demo models of software, reliability and stability can be questioned sometimes. Some of these software models get released for users to try and report where possible bugs are present in their systems or where the product can be improved before the company makes their official licensed release of the product, giving the user the sense of being a part of the product’s fine tuning.
Other open source software projects are built and managed by volunteer or student programmers to give them a feel of the market and serves as portfolios or exercise pieces. Some of theses software types are quite well known by users like Mozilla Firefox and Apache HTTP Server. The most successful freeware to make it onto the market today is the GNU/Linux Operating System, which was a step forward in the world of open source software.