What are benefits of open source software?

Answer 1

Open source software is important because, there are various advantages of using open source software. Such systems are reliable and secure to use. Also lower cost required for software and hardware. Now a days many business industries are using open source software such as Ephesoft, Xaraya, OpenKM, OpenCM for business growth.

Answer 2

It's not important, but it's better because the community maintains it. That means you're sure nobody is spying on you as you use it, and you can use it and give it to friends for free. Also, if you're a company, you can hire a coder to modify it to do what you want.

Answer 3

To be precise, it is free in a sense that anyone can obtain the source code and modify it and use it.
It does not necesarily have to be free in the sense of 'free lunch' or 'free beer', as the license can be restricted. Most of the time, however, use of open source software is indeed free and one only has to pay for support contracts if one so desires.

Answer 4

Advantages

Open-source software is free to use, distribute, and modify. It has lower costs, and in most cases this is only a fraction of the cost of their proprietary counterparts.

Open-source software is more secured as the code is accessible to everyone. Anyone can fix bugs as they are found, and users do not have to wait for the next release. The fact that is continuously analyzed by a large community produces secure and stable code.

Open source is not dependent on the company or author that originally created it. Even if the company fails, the code continues to exist and be developed by its users. Also, it uses open standards accessible to everyone; thus, it does not have the problem of incompatible formats that exist in proprietary software.

Lastly, the companies using open-source software do not have to think about complex licensing models and do not need anti-piracy measures like product activation or serial number.

Answer 5

The advantages of open source software are:

1)Their source codes are available to everyone.I.e anyone with the knowledge of programming can modify the program.You can create your custom version of the software.(prime advantage)

2)They can be transferred from one user to another without any worry of being sued of software piracy.

Disadvantages:

1)since anyone with a code can modify it,Any user with bad intentions are likely to develop a malware or other destructive softwares inside it.mostly possibl in Linux distros

2)open source softwares are not THAT fully developed.

Answer 6

Free, customizable, free, constantly updating, free, different versions depending on your needs, free; you get the idea.

Answer 7

Well it is good to personalize the program without having to face legal situations.

Answer 8

Open source software is free and allows you to take and add components to the software. It can be freely used or edited by anyone.