Open Source - Where the World is Heading?

Last week I discussed about the Why we need Open Source touching various aspects of Open-Source softwares. This week we will discuss where the world is heading to in terms of Open Source.

Recently there've been many activities in the IT Industry especially companies working on Open-Source softwares.

1. More and more Companies are moving to Open Source Softwares. There is a saying in IT Industry "Check for Open Source, Before you Build it". These days more and more companies are following this principle. They look for open source software which meets their requirement before they decide to build it.

2. Expanding Domains: Earlier Open Source were limited to utilities, components etc. But these days almost any kind of software is available as open source. At times the number of softwares are so many that one got to choose which one to go for and which one meets the requirement most. Isn't that a good thing to be :)

3. Increased Reliability: The open source softwares are more reliable these days than the Properitory softwares. The big example is more and more companies adopting MySQL database over Oracle, MS SQL Server etc. The usage of open source is not a scare anymore.

4. Adopted by big Corps: Eclipse project is adopted by IBM and they use the eclipse for their flagship product WebSphere Application Developer Studio. Eclipse project which is an open source project is funded by IBM is one of the best and most liked Java IDE today.

5. Becoming Popular Choice: It was couple of weeks back at our workplace we were discussing about a codec to stream media files over internet and we came across an Open Source software which is much more powerful than any other licensed software we evaluated. Also for all the real-time and mission critical applications we are using Unix and MySQL database in our global server network. We are not the only one. There are many companies around the globe who are looking at Open Source as their option when it comes to choosing a software.

Next week we will discuss about what is available in this open source world. Though the list is very long, I will put my best effort to give a snapshot of what is available.

Until Next Time...:)