E-MailOpen Source Software: How Far Does It Stretch?
The open source software movement has been catapulted into the limelight over the last two years, as a series of successful projects have captured the attention of corporate America. For example, the Linux operating system, poster-child of the open source movement, took shape in 1991 alongside the GNU Project to develop a freely available operating system. Linus Torvalds posted the initial 10,000 lines of code onto the Internet and asked for feedback. The rest, as they say, is history. Almost ten years later, Linux (in combination with other "free software" components) is viewed as a viable alternative to proprietary Unix systems and has Windows firmly in its sights. Yet Torvalds himself has written less than 5% of the code base, relying instead on thousands of programmers around the globe who contribute new code, bug fixes, and even documentation, on a daily basis. But does open source really represent a viable alternative to the proprietary model of software development?
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