Day 6: About Open and Free source softwares

Today’s lecture was about free and open source software. Software is written in programming languages that tell a computer what to do. In the past software was free. Anyone could use it. But as personal computers were introduced, the source code was locked and only secured personnel could see the code.

Free software’s run on four principles:
Freedom 0: We can run the program for any purpose.
Freedom 1: To study how the program works.
Freedom 2: To redistribute copies.
Freedom 3: To improve the program and to release it with improvements.

Open source was the name given to the free source software as to promote it in the business world. The other type of software which is used is proprietary software which is also called closed source (MS-Windows, MacOS, MS-Office, Internet explorer). Basic examples of free software include linux, open office and firefox. Then we discussed about how the open source software works. What are its benefits and problems? Linux is a highly successful operating system. It can be used as an alternative for MS-Windows or MacOS. It can run almost all computer architectures.

One of the tasks for today was to use a open source software. I have been using Mozilla Firefox for a long time now. When compared to internet explorer, it is faster. It has got better features. It is user friendly as well. I have looked into second software as well called opera. I think it is slow when compared to Firefox or the internet explorer.