What are Free and Open source development?

Answer 1

Closed source: WindowsOpen source: RedHat for Linux

Any Linux program you install on your machine, it's code is available to you, free to modify and recompile, even the operating system. The opposite, closed source, is like Windows, where the only people who see the source code has a last name of Gates. Both have security advantages and disadvantages. To be truly open source, you must offer uncompiled source code with your compiled application. This is why open source tends to be free, because one may simply copy the source code and compile into an application.

AnswerThe Open Source movement covers a lot of different types of software. There is a ton of info on the net about it. One good link is http://www.gnu.org/ , and will clarify just what open source is. www.Linux.org is a good place to read about Linux. www.theopencd.org is a good place to download free Open Source software written to run on Windows. If nothing else, Open Source provides competition for the mega for-profit companies, and helps to keep prices down. www.ubuntu.org is the best place I've found to begin learning Linux. You can order it free, burned to a two-disk set, and they pay for shipping. One disk is the install disk, to reformat your hard drive and install Ubuntu for real. The other is a "live" disk. Just pop in in your CD drive, boot up..and you're running Ubuntu Linux. However, when you shut down, you'll find that your Windows install has remained untouched. It's really pretty cool. Lots to learn, lots to try. But, it's free, and works. Have fun.