There are often misconceptions behind open source. There is the idea that if you don't shell out big bucks for software, that it can't be any good.

This is what I hear...

1. Open source is garbage, there isn't a company to back it up
2. Open source is hard to load onto your computer
3. Open source can make your computer crash or worse

Choose any one of the three and it could be correct, however the well built open source software is often better quality than the commercial counterpart and it is certainly less expensive.

For example, if you compare the feature set of Open Office to Microsoft Office Suite, you may be surprised at how well they compare. At my place of work, only about a third of the staff uses the Office suite. Most use Office instead. Part of this, certainly, has to do with working at a very geeky place, but part of it has to do with thriftiness.

Linux is fast becoming a truly viable option for an operating system. Both MacOS and Windows are expensive alternatives. Personally, I am a fan of MacOS but if the same feature set were available in a Linux distro I might not be sitting here writing this blog post on a Macbook Pro.

Drupal is a fabulous open source Content Management System and can practically be used immediately after being loaded on a server. If you want it to look custom or do things that it doesn't out of the box then customization is needed. This is one of the things pingVision, my workplace, does extremely well.

So what makes open source open? There are several thing that have to happen.

1. The code set must be exposed so anybody can look at it and alter it
2. The code must be proved free of charge
3. You must agree, if you alter the code set, to provide those changes to the community for free

How can people make a living from open source? If you know an open source product well, you can sell your know how as a service. This is how the Drupal and Joomla houses out there can earn good livings. But anybody who is willing to learn the software that well has an equal chance of doing the same thing.

The power of open source can be numbers. There can potentially be thousands of developers around the world working on the same product. Some of the contributions will be terrible, while others are genius. With any luck, the poor options are weeded and the excellent options become well used.

Drupal has formalised this process to ensure only stable contributions end up in core. That doesn't mean that contributed modules are all fabulous, but it does give the project as a whole a good chance of have stable core elements. What you add is your own problem.

Next time you are looking for a software solution. Look at open source as an option. It might not be the best route to take, but it does bear exploring.

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