To understand what open source is, you have to understand what does mean "Open-content": with this term, you refer to any kind of creative production
that basically have no legal limitation and therefore could be modified by anyone and redistributed to anyone as well. Cool, isn't it?
Note that open had been purposely used instead of free because in English free is often used to indicate a thing "without cost".
This because open-content is primarily a philosophy: the main purpose isn' t to distribute things for free, instead encourage everyone to contribute and share his knowledge.
It' s a matter of ethics, not of price.
If you' re still confused, look at Wikipedia as an example: it is the result of the work of thousands of people that would like to make knowledge available to anyone.
Open Source is simply the "open philosophy" applied to the world of software. The source, in fact, is what the developer has written in order to obtain the
working program: the aim is to allow everyone to get, modify and redistribute it in totally freedom, as any other kind of open-content production.
When I' ve read for the first time about these things, I simply though: "Amazing!".
It' s hard to believe that now-a-days there are still people that have genuine ideals,
that don't care about money but instead are glad and happy to collaborate each other for the benefit of all. These reasons makes me want to be part of this, spreading this philosophy
and hoping someday, somehow, to give my little contribute too.
However, I know that for you this may not be enough, you want to know which advantages you practically gain using open source software: it can't be better than commercial software! Well, that' s not true...
First of all, if a bug (an error, a not-wanted behaviour) is found, it is usually fixed in a few hours; the reason is always the same: everyone has got the source, if I don't know where the problem is, certainly
someone else will be glad to discover it for me (and for him too, because everyone obviously benefit of software that works better).
So, beyond any open source project, there is a community that follow it.
This is possible thanks to the internet, that lets people talk, discuss and, why not, code: almost every open source project is born on the web and grows thanks to it. Many discussion forum and mailing list had been created to
let everyone be part of the project: usually you use them to get help, but you can also communicate a bug you' ve found, suggest a new feature, join the developer-group, join the translation-group and many other interesting stuff.
Now, let' s make a step back. I was talking about the quality of open source software: think about what I' ve just said. If a feature is requested by many people, it won't pass too long before developers starting write some code that
implements that feature. People then will say what they think about what developers have done and simply the software keeps becoming better!
How many time you' ve seen a software that wasn't in your language? "This software is so cool, is it possible that no one wants to translate it?". The source is not just code, but contains language data too: if you don't have the source there' s
no way to translate a software! If an open source software isn' t localized in your language, just join its translation-group and start translate it.
In conclusion, there are many ways to contribute and you don' t have to know any programming language, in most of the case. Donating, for example, is a cool way to say thanks: maybe you just want to offer them a coffee, or maybe you have seen the
hard work people have done day by day to improve the software and you are glad to pay them a pizza or something more. Anyway never forget to help other people on forums or mailing list if you know how to solve their problems: I bet it will make you
fell better receiving their thanks and, also, one day you may need their help as well, and they won't refuse it.
I would like to spend the last few words saying that only 2% of linux (a completely open source operating system) source had been written by its creator (who was a student at the time he started coding it).
