The Open Source Day conference is a celebration of the community and users of open source. A once local conference has, within only a few years, turned into one of the biggest international events dedicated to open source in Central Europe. The event is a great opportunity for meetings, discussions, exchange of viewpoints, or opportunities for future cooperation.
Open Source is: innovation, progress, security, flexibility, interoperability, low production and development costs. As the leader of the open software movement, Eric Raymond, once said: “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." A similar principle works in the case of the development of software usability and functionality.
Sharing the modifications and ideas for changes has a practical dimension. The bigger number of people, who have access to the code and browse it, allows for faster detection of security issues or ineffective algorithms - and their elimination and improvement at the same time. There is not a single company in the world that could compete with the Open Source community.
What is an open source from legal viewpoint?
From legal perspective, there are several factors that determine a source as “open”. However, it is worth it to focus on the two major perspectives. First, the source code has to be available for everyone. Secondly, it can be changed and re-distributed under the conditions determined in a license. This way excludes all discrimination and guarantees neutrality.
Open Source is a model for creating solutions that are not limited within themselves. Quite contradictory – it opens up new, previously unavailable paths of development. In the context of business and production of IT solutions for particular usage needs, this is an option that is almost unbeatable and is a motor of progress for many companies around the world.
Times when the open source solutions were treated as a cheaper version of commercial programs are long gone. Currently, clients decide on open source solutions not because of the low-costs, but, first and foremost, because of better parameters and the lack of dependence on one manufacturer.
Limitations in the use of Open Source
From a legal perspective, there aren’t any special limitations to the use of open source software. However, some administrative discrimination in the adoption of Open Source can be observed. There are too many bureaucratic habits in both the area of public contracts and accounting, which prefer the purchase of software with a closed license. This situation is major a result of insufficient knowledge about the legal aspects of Open Source use.
It is worth taking a closer look at good practices in other countries where governments are actually using open source solutions in administrative institutions. Unfortunately, such solutions do not exist in Poland. It would be a good idea to set up a public competence center that would support central institutions of administration and particular modernization projects in the process of selection of variant solutions. At the same time, it would maximize the potential of this particular model of licensing and make IT technologies available to the public.
It should be noted that the very idea of Open Source is alive on our market and it gains growing interest. Solid proof of this is the Open Source Day conference.
The boundaries of Open Source
Summarising the above-mentioned thoughts, it has to be said that in the practical aspect there are no boundaries in the usage of open source. It can even be said that the boundaries are set where the demand for new functionalities, application and technologies lay – making them actually constantly expanding because thoughts cannot be limited. And this is the success of openness.
We invite everyone for Open Source Day 2024
Those, who would like to:
We would like to invite you to the Open Source Day 2024 conference.