Open and Closed Source Operating Systems

Computer systems are split into two parts. There is the hardware part which controls the actual mechanisms and then there is the software part which controls logically how the hardware part acts. As computer hardware advances, so must software to take advantage of better performance and features. Software grew in two directions with the continued growth of computer systems based on two factions. One faction believes that operating systems should be open-sourced and available to everyone while the other faction wanted to keep the software they developed close-sourced and private. This is still a large debate today as there are many programs released open-source and others that are released closed-source. Operating systems are just one of many programs to be release in both methods.

Open-Source Operating Systems

Open-source operating systems are very common. The Android operating system for mobile devices is the easiest one to notice. Developed by Google and released to the public for use and modification. For software to be considered open-source, it must have a specific qualification.

Open-source software is called this because of how it is released. Software is processed by computers in code called binary code. Programmers and users who want to see the code cannot read this binary code. It must be reverse-engineered into what is called source code. The resulting source code is very difficult to achieve and lacks and comments and understanding pointers that might have been included in the original source code. Open-source software must release the original source code for it to be considered open-source. This allows users the opportunity to read and understand the code and make adjustments to the source code. Then from the modified source code new binary code can be created.

There are many benefits to releasing the source code of a program. With many users reading over the code bugs and issues are located and solved very fast. It may seem that with the...