Open source technology, as the name suggests, is an open-to-all concept which allows the contribution and involvement of various knowledgeable resources from different domains of industry either associated with the organization or freelancers. All of these subject knowledge owners contribute in polishing and fine-tuning of the concept in order to enhance the performance and widen the scope of its application.
Discussing in the context of software industry, open source technology has been a key area of interest for a number of developers. Different developers from all over the world add their personally developed code and modules in the library of the software package to improve the usability of the software application. Since most of the businesses of the world are directly or indirectly dependent on software, all these businesses are affected in one way or the other in their business practices.
Taking an example of database technology, different open source database management systems have been introduced and have become the priority for developers to deploy them instead of proprietary ones. Companies like Facebook have chosen MySQL as their database management system for maintaining its application over the proprietary systems like MS Access and Oracle. Reason for the same could be the fact that Open source technologies have evolved using the innovation and involvement of a million of brains as compared to the proprietary one's which depends on few hundred. Moreover, there are no business or management boundations in open source system while a business moderation is always there in closed source technology (another name for proprietary systems).
Open source is coming into the mainstream business practices of the open-to-all nature of these platform provides assistance for a variety of processes. Moreover, there is a free assistance available online about the same, supported by a dedicated group whose members from around the world provide a helping hand for advising a solution to any problem.
The mobile ecosystem is another extension of open source technology where the most popular mobile OS i.e. Android is an open source initiative. Android now holds about 75% of smartphones market as on May 2013. The open source nature has allowed different developers to contribute in the app store of Android with their independently developed applications, popularizing the mobile OS itself. This boost in the popularity has gained financial benefits to the organizations associated with the smartphone OS.
Business models have also changed drastically with the emergence of open source platforms. Vendors have come into existence who provide the proprietary extension for the open source software which improves the usability of the platform. This provides business benefits to both the parties and helps them grow while contributing in favor of open source technology.
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