Ambar Kundu et al. / (IJCSIT) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technologies, Vol.

1 (4) , 2010, 226-229

Application of Free and Open source software and its

Impact on society
Ambar kundu, Debashish swain,Sitanath Biswas
Information Technology
Institute of Technical Education and Research
Shiksha ‘O’ Anusandhan University
Bhubaneswar, India
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

Abstract— Free and open source software is one of the effective between the developers and users. The participants in the FOS
tool that can make the world self-dependent. It facilitates the are motivated by the exchange of knowledge to achieve
design and use of your own software. This can also lead to recognition from their peers. Also, the technology transfer
economic liberty as the FOSS is available at a very low cost. improves when the flow of information is two-way among the
These softwares are also more secure as the users can report the
threats or bugs to the developers and developers can update the
producers and consumers, which can be achieved through the
software to make it more reliable for the future users. FOS model adoption. The purpose of citing the above
developmental model was to show that how user can help in
developing new products.
Keywords— Free and Open source software, effective tool, self-
dependent, economic liberty, secure, reliable IV. APPLICATION OF FREE AND OPEN SOFTWARE
I. INTRODUCTION The main application of free and open source software is
due to the fact that it is available at very low cost, other
This paper will give an overview of what is free and open applications are from research and training where young
source software and will mainly concentrate on its uses in minds are taught about the working of software. So that they
various fields with some of it’s effects on our society. can build new products.
II. FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE A. Business Firms
Free software is a term coined by Richard Stallman,
programmer in MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. According to FOS has found a wide application in many of the business
him free in free software means the freedom one can get from firms. As these softwares are available free of cost so
using these softwares. These softwares could be used, companies can gain huge profits by using them. Whereas the
modified, redistributed without any permission required. proprietary softwares require huge capital investments.
Open source software is basically the same in which the One of the essential features of the Free and Open source
source codes of the software are available at free or nominal software is that it can be changed as required. Using this
cost so one can install it and use it. feature they can customise the software as required .So now
Free softwares should satisfy the following criteria in order they need not to be dependent on the vendors for any update
to be called as free software. These features are laid down by or change in the software .Below given are some of the FOSS
Richard Stallman creator of GPL (GNU General public that can be used in business houses.
License) 1) Linux –It is a type operating system which is derived
A. The freedom to run the program for any purpose. from the UNIX family. Linux can be used on wide variety of
B. The freedom to study how the program works and computer hardware ranging from mobile phones, tablet
modify it. computers and video game consoles to mainframes and
C. The freedom to redistribute copies. supercomputers.
D. The freedom to distribute the modified copies so as to
help the entire community. Linux is predominantly known for its usage in server. In a
2009 survey it was found that about 40% of the servers use
Linux. The popularity of Linux on standard desktops (and
III. FREE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT MODEL
laptops) has been increasing over the years due to the
The FOS development model is based on information, graphical user environments. The two popular environments
comments, test results, features, and requests exchanged are GNOME and KDE both of which support a wide variety

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of languages. The bar graph below shows the use of different

soft wares.
60.00%

50.00%

40.00%

30.00%

20.00%

10.00%

0.00%
Windows XP Windows Vista Windows 7 LINUX MAC OS i OS(iPhone)

Windows XP Windows Vista Windows 7

LINUX MAC OS i OS(iPhone)

Figure 1 Usage share of web client Operating System

2) My SQL- It is the world's most popular open source The application is available for a wide variety of
database software, with over 100 million copies of its Operating Systems like GNU, Linux, Solaris, MAC OS
software downloaded or distributed till date. With its X, and Microsoft Windows. Since April 1996 Apache has
superior speed, reliability, and ease of use, My SQL has been the most popular HTTP server software in use. As of
become the preferred choice for Web, Telecom February 2010 Apache served over 54.46% of all
companies and forward-thinking corporate IT Managers websites and over 66% of the million busiest sites.
because it eliminates the major problems associated with Apache is primarily used to serve both static content and
downtime, maintenance and administration for modern, dynamic web pages on the World Wide Web.
online applications. Many of the world's largest and
fastest-growing organizations use MySQL to save time 4) BIND is by far the most widely used DNS softwareon the
and money powering their high-volume Web sites, Internet. It provides a robust and stable platform on top of
critical business systems, and packaged software — which organizations can build distributed computing
including industry leaders such as Yahoo!, Alcatel- systems with the knowledge that those systems are fully
Lucent, Google, Nokia, YouTube, Wikipedia, and compliant with published DNS standards. BIND is open
Booking.com. MySQL is a key part of LAMP (Linux, source software that implements the Domain Name
Apache, MySQL, PHP / Perl / Python), the fast-growing System (DNS) protocols for the Internet. It is a reference
open source enterprise software stack. More and more implementation of those protocols, but it is also
companies are using LAMP as an alternative to expensive production-grade software, suitable for use in high-
proprietary software stacks because of its lower cost and volume and high-reliabilityapplications. BIND is
freedom from vendor lock-in. available for free download under the terms of the ISC
3) Apache-The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to License, a BSD style license.
as Apache is web server software notable for playing a 5) Sendmail is a general purpose network mailing routing
key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In facility that supports many kinds of mail-transfer and -
2009 it became the first web server software to surpass delivery methods including the Simple Mail Transfer
the 100 million web site milestone. Apache is developed Protocol used for email transport over the internet.
and maintained by an open community of developers Sendmail is a well-known project of free and open source
under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation. software that has developed both as proprietary and free
software. In 2001, approximately 42% of the publicly-
reachable mail-servers on the Internet ran Sendmail.
More recent surveys have suggested a decline, with

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29.4% of mail servers in August 2007 detected as running A. Social Impact

Sendmail in a study performed by E-Soft, Inc. Sendmail The primary goal of the FOSS Project is to build a
is trailed by Microsoft Exchange Server, Exim, Postfix; collaborative community of developers and users. Developers
these four being the only mail servers with more than develop their products to help the community to be self
10% of the total. dependent i.e. not to be excessive dependent on vendors for
their products.
B. Educational Institutes The social impacts of making the software and its source
FOSS has found a large application in the field of research code available for free start from the users of the software.
and education. Educational institutes can use the open source Users who are using the free and open source software play an
software to teach the future coders about how a software important role in making the software robust. As they could
works .These softwares come with open code that can be used, only know what are the drawbacks or threats to the software.
modified many a times to learn different things. In contrast the Now if the users who are competent enough in the
proprietary software comes with only training of how to use programming language in which the software is written, they
the software i.e. the working manual. In other words it shows can directly change the code and can make the software more
with it what one can do. It never discloses the codes to the reliable. They can either release it in the market with the
users. For example while downloading the Linux kernel a previous developer or can relaunch the new product in the
open source software one can find there are two options one market. The licenses under which these soft wares products
for new users another for experienced users .If clicked on the are protected like GPL allow them to do such things without
other option one can change the settings as per requirement. any permission from the real developers else they can also
These features are only available in FOSS. give their essential feedback to developers so that they can
change the software and release the new version in market to
V. IMPACT OF FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE make it easy for the future coders.
A. Economic Impact Also, in this type of Software developmental process one
FOSS is available with free or nominal cost so the firms with sound knowledge of the programming language from any
using these softwares can get huge profits in their balance part of the world can join the developers to give out cheap,
sheets. The FOSS are updated periodically to incorporate new efficient and robust software to the world. From this they can
changes that were suggested by ethical users .So many gain more knowledge of the working of software and also gets
Companies update their software without any extra cost. They recognition from big software firms.
also get the improved security from the updated versions. It is Other impacts of FOSS are that now more people have
due to the efficiency of FOSS that today about 40% of the become computer literate. Generally the proprietary soft wares
servers use Linux. Below given are some details of an Indian are developed in the western countries so all of them support
firm that got huge benefits while switching to open source only the main languages of the world and ignore other
softwares. The name of the firm is Life Insurance Corporation languages. FOSS has helped them to make the software
of India. It was needed to connect its 2048 branches across the available in their own local language.
country to make all the divisional offices achieve the 100% Example-BOSS (Bharat Operating System Solutions) is a
branch computerization. All the branches were connected to derivation from Debian software developed by C-DAC
the zonal and divisional offices through Wide Area Network (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) in 18
(WAN) while the offices in the same city are connected via a Indian languages which has helped them to make its citizen
Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). Each branch has one computer literate.
dedicated server while the divisional and zonal offices had
about 10 servers each and the central corporate office had
VI. CONCLUSIONS
about 50 servers. Thus, in total, the server count was close to
3500. Each branch had about 20 to 30 workstations. The total The conclusion that can be drawn from the above text that
desktop count was close to 30,000. free and open source software are the cheapest, secure and
customizable software that has wide application in making the
TABLE I
DETAILS OF SAVINGS
world less dependent of the proprietary software and to
innovate new products to help the mankind.
Items Cost Saving
Servers-All of them were $ 5 million
migrated to LINUX ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Desktops-Also migrated to $ 3.75 million The authors are grateful to their teachers, especially to Mr
LINUX Sitanath Biswas lecturer IT, ITER, Shiksha ‘O’ Anusndhan
Total $ 8.75 million University. It is from them that we got insight knowledge
about the topic. We also thank the wikipedia the encyclopedia
for stunning reports about the impact of FOSS.

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