Long Run of Open Source Software in Business World
Free and open source software has become the newest craze in business and IT world. The second question ‘is it good for my business’ now takes a secondary position. Both business owners and managers agree to the use of free and open source software.
The real buzz about open source is not hyped by any corporation or company. It is a group of self motivated IT professionals from across America and Europe are behind this newfound attraction of open source software.
The main advantage of open source software is that the users have full control over the source code of any program delivered under open source license. Now people become more and more sensitized about the advantages of having access to the root of a program.
The main advantages that come with access to source code are Flexibility or adaptability, control, lowest possible costs, long term usage and upgrading without additional costs. The business house has to pay for coders and developers though.
Anyone is free to make any changes to software suites or programs released under Open Source License. Anyone can add, edit and make modifications to make the program work in any imaginable manner. The modifier is also allowed to resell the software.
Only restriction on such an open source license is that you have to provide access to the source code that you have modified or added. It is however not necessary to release source code of the modifications made to the original program if it is not distributed or sold. The developer company is free to use it for their own in house purposes. Whenever they sell it in the market, they have to license it under Open Source agreement.
Open source software projects, in most cases attract the fancy of skilled developers from around the world. They actively participate in collaborative development, fixing bugs and adding useful features. The end result will be a completely different software, may be many times useful than the original one.
Jbilling Free Open Source Billing Software (http://www.jbilling.com/) remained the most active projects from among 137,389 open source software projects (as on Dec. 1, 2006) at SorceForge.net for quite a long time. SourceForge.net offers a collaborative environment for software developers develop open source software and is a source code repository which presently hosts many thousands of Open Source projects.
Open Source Billing Software project by JBilling has really picked up momentum and the present version 1.0.4 is available for free download at their website.
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To download and learn more about
jBilling Free Open Source Billing Software, visit
http://www.jbilling.com.
Source: ArticleTrader.com