thinking of a body of software code as a set of instructions for a computer - an artifact, a "thing" in and of itself. In this context, what is open source software and how it differs from proprietary software products to build and sell companies like Microsoft and Oracle?
Consider a simple example of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is selling bottles of soda to the consumer. Consumer uses soda. Some of the consumer to read the list of ingredients on the bottle, but the list of ingredients is surprisingly generic. Coca-Cola is proprietary formula that does not say on the bottle or elsewhere. This formula is the realization that it is possible to combine the coke, sugar, water and a few other ingredients readily available in several sizes in a secret mix of spices and something of great value. Point is that the bubbling liquid in the glass can not be reverse-engineered into its components. You can buy a coke and you can drink it, but you can not understand it, in a way, you can copy the drink, or to improve it and share your cola drink in other parts of the world.
economy standard of "intellectual property" is a simple statement of why the production practice of Coca-Cola regime in this way. The central problem of intellectual property rights, it should be about creating incentives for innovators. Patents, copyrights, license agreements and other means of "protecting" sure knowledge that economic rents are created and some percentage of claims Innovator rents. If this is not the case, a new and improved formula will be made immediately to full and free for anyone who wants to view it.
This guy formula is not particularly economical and reasonable claim a share of the revenue that can be generated by the sale of drinks from changing invention. And the system unraveled, because that person is no longer any rational incentive to make changes in the first place.
The production of computer software is usually organized under a similar regime with parallel arguments behind. You can buy Microsoft Windows and you can use them on your computer, but you can not reproduce it, enhance, modify, and distribute your own version of Windows to another. Copyright, licenses, patents and other legal structure provides a layer of legal protection regime, but with more fundamental mechanism that prevents you from doing any of these things. Just as Coca-Cola formula is not so, Microsoft and other software vendors do not release their source code freely.
The source code is a list of instructions. The "recipe" for a software package Software engineers write source code in programming language (such as C + + or Fortran) that a person can read and understand, and to adjust and change. Most commercial software is published in machine-readable language or so-called "binaries" - can be a long string of zeros and reads a computer and run, but a person can not read. The source code is only one recipe for binaries, and if you have the source code, you can understand, trying to achieve what the author when he wrote the program - that is, you can change it. If you only have binaries, you probably do not understand, or modify them. Therefore transmitting binary code is very effective way proprietary software companies to control what you buy Using software to do
proprietary source code is the testing of conventional intellectual property regime for computer software. Proprietary source code is the actual reason why Windows could sell for around $ 100 (or why Oracle could sell its sophisticated data management software for many thousands of dollars) and spread some of that money for the programmer to write code - and hence incentives for them to make changes.
