The Dreamer

SCL 2: COMPUTER SOFTWARE

1(A) What is open source software?

Open source software is computer software with its source code made available or in the other hand, its is a broad type of software license that makes its source code available to general public with relaxed or non-existent copyright prohibition. We have the right to study ,change and distribute the software for any purpose and with absolutely free of charge.

1(B)  In your opinion why people prefer source software over proprietary alternatives nowadays?

Reason of people prefering open source software than proprietary software nowadays is that using open software have a lot of advantages and easier to use rather than using proprietary software. The advantages are as following:

Open source software advantages;

• §  obviously it’s free
• §  more secured as the code is accessible to everyone(anyone can remove and fix virus rather than waiting for the author to fix it)
• §  does not depend on the existence of the owner. Even if the owner collapse or fail,the code continues to exist
• §  the standard and compatibility are open thus it did not have problem of incompatible with formats that exist in proprietary software
• §  changes and modification allowed

and in the other hand, proprietary software have a lot of disadvantages for the user:

proprietary source software;

• §  costly as we need to pay to use the software
• §  prohibited to be distributed
• §  the code is only accessible to the author or company and certain people thus user have no freedom to remove and fix any problem encounter the source
• §  have limited compability as it can’t be modified and fix to the original standard
• §  the code is depend on the existence of the owner as only the owner or company have the license for software

1(C) Name top 5 most popular open source software and compare than with similar proprietary softaware.

TOP 5 MOST POPULAR OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

·         VLC Media Player

·         Open Office

·         General Image Manipulation Program(GIMP)

·         Linux

·         Morzilla Firefox

COMPARISON BETWEEN OPEN SOURCE AND PROPRIETARY SOURCE

	VLC Media Player	Real Player
Features	Support for DVDs of all region, audio and video sync adjustment	Convert, download and share video, advanced CD burning
Sync able hardware	No sync able hardware	IPod, cellphone and Xbox
Supported optical media	CD, DVD, DVD Audio	CD, DVD
Open source	Yes	No(proprietary)

   

                                              

	Microsoft Office	Open Office
Definition	A suite of different application, server and service such as Word and Excel	Suite of open source office productivity software suite that contain word processor, spreadsheet,etc
Characteristic	Can open all Microsoft document files such as doc and docx	Can support all Microsoft office files
Component	Word, Excel, Power Point, One Note, etc	Writer, calc, impress, draw, etc
Open Source	No(proprietary)	Yes

                            

	General Image Manipulation Program(GIMP)	Adobe Photoshop
User	General use	Preferred by professional photographer
Availability	Available for Mac, Windows, Linux and Unix	Available for Mac and Windows only
User interface	GIMP UI is composed of multiple window	Made up of a single window that contain child window
Open Source	Yes	No(proprietary)

                                 

 

	Linux	Windows
Usage	Can be installed on a wide variety of computer hardware to mainframe and supercomputer	On PC’s server and some phone
Text mode interface	Bourne Again Shell(BASH) is the Linux default shell which can support multiple command interpreters	Use a command shell and each version has a single command interpreter with dos-like command
Threat detection and solution	It is very fast as Linux is community driven and whenever there is any kind of treat, several developers start working on it from different part of the world	After detecting a major threat in Windows OS, Microsoft generally releases a patch that can fix the problem and it can take more than 2/3 months.
Open Source	Yes	No(proprietary)

                      

	Mozilla Firefox	Internet explorer
Features	Speed, security, array of features and extension	Address bar provide autocomplete, crash recovery and flexible search option
Operating system	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android	Window
Limitation	Not all websites are compatible, memory, downloads will restart if interrupted	Supported only by Windows, no download manager
Open Source	Yes	No(proprietary)

                                                             

By: Fready Luke,Adriana Ali and Marcyril Marcos