Maintenance of Open Source vs. Closed Source Software

After a new piece of software is released into the market, either through traditional retail methods or by word-of-mouth free distribution, developers and users of the software are confronted with the challenge of maintaining, protecting, improving, and otherwise updating the product they have either bought or sold. Open source and closed source developers and users handle this challenge in different ways.

Closed Source Maintenance and Support

Due to the nature of closed source or proprietary software, only one entity – the developing company or group – has the access, knowledge, and legal right to make significant and important changes to the software. Such a system creates a kind of centralizing effect, in that virtually all security measures, customer support, and further software development occur in one unified location. While users can conceivably work around their own problems or even design their own fixes, such actions are much more difficult and often illegal.

While quality control is a valid argument for such a closed source system, it tends to overload developers with too many tasks at once. The result is that important tasks are either delegated, overlooked, or simply done slowly or poorly.

Open Source Maintenance and Support

Open source software, on the other hand, is much more decentralized. Though the original developers may be at the forefront of most improvement efforts, open source software often enjoys innovation from a huge user/consumer/developer base. The upper limit of resources available to open source software, therefore, is higher than any closed source developer could ever hope to achieve. In this way, the potential of open source software can be said to greatly exceed that of closed source software.

There are drawbacks to such a system, however. A distributed improvement and support base means that quality control is difficult, if not impossible. A lack of business-minded scheduling and coordination means that progress can be extremely fast or extremely slow, depending on the particular person or people working on a specific task, and a host of different approaches can lead to confusion, compatibility issues, and inconsistencies not present in closed source systems.

To download open source software, contact a nonprofit open source software developer MPower at 800.562.5150.