Open Source Technology
Most developing countries face similar problems regarding technology transfer
. They include the lack of technical and know-how knowledge, Brain drain and the lack of appropriate technologies for their needs. The situation worsens with the absence of investment in technology and clear plans for technology adoption. The Free Open Source (FOS) concept is one of the cheapest yet most effective solutions for technology transfer, and is particularly useful in software programs.
Typically, FOS is linked to software that is available online free of charge, including the source code or all the information needed for using and modifying the program. The FOS concept offers not only low cost to technology acquisition, but also an efficient scheme of cooperation to exploit such technology. The nature of the cooperation to develop open source technologies and to customize such technologies can aid developing countries in the improvement of their current technology transfer systems. 'Open Source' software is the current manifestation of a culture of collaboration which has existed since the early days of computer science and having its roots in what some people call the 'hacker ethic' exemplified by the computer science fraternity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from the 1960's onwards.
Expanding from 870 publicly-accessible 'sites' in November 1994 to over 5 million distinct sites by April 1999 the internet represents the fastest-growing mode of communication currently available. Of the 5 million sites reported by Stein (current estimates as of September 1999 run at more than 7 million), some are tiny online documents such as 'personal home pages' while others represent entire educational institutions, libraries databases, corporate e-commerce sites or large sites such as 'Geocities' which hosts web pages for an estimated 1.7 million individual users. Distributed across the internet are a large number of what Rheingold (1984) has called 'virtual communities', amongst which are numbered the various groups of open-source developers and users.
Additionally, there are explicitly educational 'communities' within which teachers and students share resources, review work and work collaboratively on, for example, writing and programming projects (Bruckman 1998). Mansell and Wehn (1998) have discussed strategies for building "knowledge societies" and the potential uses of ICT for sustainable development, while Nardi (1999) has referred to "information ecologies" as "a system of people, practices, values and technologies in a particular local environment. In information ecologies the spotlight is not on technology, but on human activities that are served by technology." It is this feature which can be considered to make a technology 'appropriate'.
While the prevailing perception of the development of the internet and specifically the World Wide Web may be one of being built and maintained using proprietary products , it has been established that, across the internet as a whole, the majority of web servers operate Apache web server software. This web server is increasingly likely to be running on one of the free Unix variants (FreeBSD or Linux); the majority of users' email is handled by Sendmail, and developers and administrators are likely to use one or more of a set of scripting languages (Tool Command Language or Tcl, Perl and Python) to monitor and regulate access to resources and to create web-accessible databases and applications.
Web pages are commonly constructed automatically using Perl (and to a lesser extent Python) which also power many of the well-known internet search engines and catalogues. It must be stressed that open source does not represent a solution inferior to proprietary products, or that it is only suitable for operating in the low-traffic backwaters of the internet: many of what Stein (1999) calls the 'massive landmarks' of cyberspace, such as the Yahoo! catalogue and search engine, are dependent on a range of open source software. What all of these pieces of software - operating systems, servers, programming environments and applications have in common is a commitment to making their source code public and to continuous elaboration by the user and developer community.
Apache (regarded as one of the most effective 'open source' projects to date) currently has a 55% share of the world server market (according to the Netcraft survey for September 1999) despite, as Raymond (1999) observes, there being no legal owner, little promotion and no 'service contracts', just a group of IT professionals who pool code, operate a peer-review system and provide information and upgrades to colleagues and clients. This pattern of collaboration and the resulting flexibility of the software produced are the characteristic features of open source software.
The principles of Open Source Software
Free redistribution
Source code must be included
Must allow modifications and derived works
Integrity of the author's source code
No discrimination Against Persons or Groups
No discrimination against fields of endeavor
A single license must apply to all users
License must Be technology-neutral
Open Source Technology
By: Itua Peter
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