What are the advantages of OSS?
Open-source developers have the opportunity to build on each other’s ideas. The availability of OSS source code allows a worldwide community of open-source developers to participate in peer-distribution, peer-review, and peer-production. A program can be improved and redistributed ad infinitum, benefiting the entire community. As the open source model of openness and collaboration expands, the quality of OSS products also improves. The issue of overall quality aside, OSS has four inherent advantages over proprietary software. First, open-source software is considerably less expensive than proprietary alternatives. For example, Linux can be installed for free while Microsoft’s Windows operating system can cost thousands of dollars a month to license. Second, access to underlying source code means users can detect and fix programming bugs; also, OSS can be tailored to a user’s specific needs, and upgrades happen at a pace chosen by the user, not the vendor. Third, the transparency of OSS
