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[H1451]How To Open Source

by Will Kaynes, Wil

In a general sense open source means something is
free to use by anyone regardless of whether it is
a physical product or something downloadable. As
a philosophy, ?open source? is a set of
principles and practices that promote access to
the production and design process for various
goods or products.

The expression itself originated from the fact
that software is free and has an open source code.
This kind of software has become available to
the general public with relaxed or non-existent
intellectual property restrictions, which has
allowed the creation of user-generated software
content through incremental individual efforts.
In some ways the open source philosophy and
approach is similar to brainstorming, when the
best variation can be chosen from many. As a
source it is open to anyone. Anyone can modify it
over and over again and eventually the best
possibility is discovered, and then improved
again and again.

In our case the open source e-Commerce engines
were produced by a group of people who call
themselves ?Chain Reaction E-commerce? and called
it CRE Loaded. (Of course there are many more
engines but this article is about only one of
them.) After letting the genie out of the bottle
CRE Loaded engines has been modified hundreds of
times by thousands of designers who have made
tens of thousands CRE Loaded templates out of a
single source.

Of course in some way this soft kind of an abuse
is not always good as the results are sometimes
unprofessional and may spoil the original
advantages. In this case it is reasonable to work
with the so-called ?publically licensed?
companies that customize and modify the original
variant. This ?public license? means that this
company's products are well recognized by
audience, they have positive feedbacks at target
forums and resources and the company in general
is customer-oriented. Those things lead to
successful branding and successful branding
obliges businesses to have decent products.

The open source theoretically means several
development principles (according to the Bazaar
model):
?Users should be treated as co-developers (The
users are treated like co-developers and so they
should have access to the source code of the
software).
?Early Releases (The first version of the
software should be released as early as possible
so as to increase one's chances of finding co-
developers early).
?Frequent Integration (New code should be
integrated as often as possible so as to avoid
the overhead of fixing a large number of bugs at
the end of the project life cycle).
?Several Versions (There should be at least two
versions of the software. There should be a
buggier version with more features and a more
stable version with fewer features. The users can
then act as co-developers, reporting bugs and
providing bug fixes).
?High Modularization (The general structure of
the software should be modular allowing for
parallel development).

Of course not all of those patterns are used
while developing most of the software products
but while designing CRE Loaded shopping cart most
of those were enabled. Perhaps that is why
CRELoaded technology as a whole and CRELoaded
templates are so popular on the Internet today.

In November of this year Sun Microsystems moved to "open source" status for Java, after a decade of maintaining proprietary status for the portable programming language. Specifically, Sun has placed Java into the public domain by putting it under GPL - an acronym for General Public License. What this means is that software programmers will have vastly increased freedom to develop programs based on Java and to develop modifications for the language itself.

It also puts Sun into the mainstream with other major platform developers such as Linux. While the company had put its Solaris operating system into open source status some time ago, Java is a highly distributed consumer platform and providing open source access to it gives the company a real boost in its standing among its peers. Perhaps more important, it will stimulate further development of consumer oriented Java-based programs. It is estimated that eight out of every ten cell phones have a Java application running on them.

A GPL use requires that any product developed under such licensure be returned to the "open source community" and remain, in effect accessible to all. Sun's variation on this principle has an exception for applications built on the Java "Virtual Machine," a platform that the company made available to software developers some time ago.

What this exception does is allow continued development of proprietary software written for Java, which keeps the language viable as a platform for revenue producing products. Prior to the switch to GPL status, Java program developers had to pay a licensing fee to Sun.

IBM has been after Sun to take Java to open source status for years. Their Works Projects has been a center for the development of open source products, primarily based on Linux. From their perspective, Sun's decision to grant GPL status for Java is viewed as an opportunity to unite with Linux and provide a stronger platform to challenge Microsoft. The politics of software can be enormously complicated, especially when there's an elephant like Microsoft in the house. But what Sun has accomplished with this move is provide an opportunity for programmers to zero in on Java products as potentially large revenue sources.

Unlike Linux, which was spun off of UNIX to provide an alternative to Windows, Java stands in a class of its own. While Linux has survived in the marketplace, it has never mounted a major challenge to Windows. Java's unique qualities and the intellectual property that protects those qualities will now be an open book for programmers developing new applications.

It will also provide the opportunity to bundle Java products with Linux based software. Sun's internal interest in this move is to stimulate more developers to use the language, in order to revive its own internal software business. Since taking a huge hit in their high-end server market, Sun has been struggling to find a new path and has increasingly looked to software as an opportunity.

Sun's EVP for software summed up the value of the move for the company and its product. "People have been hesitant to distribute Java worldwide with Linux (distributions) because of (concerns over) license alignment," Green said. "This is the last gate to ensure that Java will be distributed worldwide."

Article Source : Pg. 7

About Author

Both Will Kaynes & Madison Lockwood are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Will Kaynes has sinced written about articles on various topics from The Internet, Web Development. Will Kaynes is a CEO of a Brooklyn-based PoweredByCreLoaded.com. A resource with lots of CRE Loaded Templates for more than 20 different business categories which provides you with any solution necessary for your e-Success.. Will Kaynes's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.

Madison Lockwood has sinced written about articles on various topics from Dogs, insurance agents and Auto Insurance. Madison Lockwood is a customer relations associate, specializing in small business development, for Apollo Hosting. Apollo Hosting provides , ecommerce h. Madison Lockwood's top article generates over 368000 views. to your Favourites.