Article Avenue - free articles and downloads - Open Source Software Development Defined

Open source software development or OSS development is the process by which open source software, which we will call OSS from hereon, (or any similar software whose source is of public domain) is developed. In the same vein, the keywords â€œopen sourceâ€ is a set of principles and practices on how to write software. The term â€œopen sourceâ€ literally means the source code is available to the users â€“ all users who are subscribing to the World Wide Web. This means that many Internet subscribers believe that any one should not only have access to the source code, but also have the right to use it, modify it, enhance it, according to personalized needs.

If the software is licensed against public use, then it is therefore classified as shared source license.

It then follows that open source software or OSS, under the open source license, is available to anyone to study, change and subsequently improve its design, without having to fear for intellectual property right for the software itself. Popular examples of these OSS are: Mozilla Firefox, and the OpenOffice.org Suite.

OSS development method is usually unstructured. This is due to the fact that there are no clear development tools or phrases which have been or defined - like that of the development methods of DSDM or Dynamic Systems Development Method. Each and every project has its own phases amidst the generalities in these open source development projects. Among these phases, any user can modify the project, which further delineates it from the general structure.

There are several types of open source projects, namely: the garden variety software programs and libraries, distribution projects, hybrid projects, and the standalone document projects.

There is the garden variety of software programs and libraries; these are stand-alone pieces of code. A number of these may even be dependent on other open source projects, but they do serve very specific purposes and fill an even more specific need in the project. Examples of these are the Firefox web browser, the Linux kernel and the OpenOffice.org office suite of tools.

There are the distribution projects or the distributions open source projects. These projects are actually a collection or collections of software that are published from the same source with the seemingly common purpose. The most prominent examples of various distribution projects are usually Linux-based operating systems, particularly those that ship the Linux kernel along with many user-land components, such as: Debian, Fedora Core, Mandriva and Slakware. For Microsoft Windows-based operating systems, there are the OpenCD distribution and the cygwin.

Hybrid projects like the BSD derivatives, maintain the source code of an entire operating system, the kernel and all of its core components in one revision control system and then developing the entire system together as a single team. These hybrid projects are also called operating system development projects, and they then to closely integrate their tools.

And then lastly, there are the standalone document projects, also called book document projects. These projects are usually not shipped as part of any open source software package. The Linux Documentation Projects is one such sample. It hosts many similar projects that document or take account various aspects of the GNU/Linux operating system.

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