International Journal of Computer Engineering & Technology (IJCET) Volume 6, Issue 8, Aug 2015, pp. 01-10, Article ID: IJCET_06_08_001 Available online at http://www.iaeme.com/IJCET/issues.asp?JTypeIJCET&VType=6&IType=8 ISSN Print: 0976-6367 and ISSN Online: 0976–6375 © IAEME Publication ___________________________________________________________________________ APPLICATION OF OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING Prof. Abhinav V. Deshpande Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering, Prof. Ram Meghe Institute of Technology & Research, Anjangaon Bari Road, Badnera, Amravati-444701, India, ABSTRACT This research paper focuses on the importance and application of using an open source software in different branches of Science and Engineering like Medicine, Technology, Defence and Military purposes, Aviation, Construction of huge buildings and Monuments, Signal and Image Processing Applications, Education and even in our day to day life. In production and development, open source as a development model promotes a universal access via a free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone. Before the phrase open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of other terms. Open source gained hold with the rise of the Internet, and the attendant need for massive retooling of the computing source code. Opening the source code enabled a self-enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths, and interactive communities. The open-source software movement arose to clarify the environment that the new copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues created. Keywords: Open Source Software, ARPANET, Solar Photovoltaic Technology, Blueprints, Source Code, SPARC V8 Specification, IP Core. Cite this Article: Prof. Abhinav V. Deshpande. Application of Open Source Software In Science and Engineering. International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology, 6(8), 2015, pp. 01-10. http://www.iaeme.com/IJCET/issues.asp?JTypeIJCET&VType=6&IType=8 1. INTRODUCTION Open-source software (OSS) is computer software with its source code made available with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner. Open-source software is the most prominent example of open-source development and often compared to http://www.iaeme.com/IJCET/index.asp 1 [email protected] Prof. Abhinav V. Deshpande (technically defined) user-generated content or (legally defined) open-content movements. The open-source model, or collaborative competition development from multiple independent sources, generates an increasingly diverse scope of design perspective than one company development alone can sustain long term. And a report by the Standish Group (from 2008) states that adoption of open-source software models has resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year to consumers. 2. HISTORY BEHIND THE EVOLUTION OF OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE In 1997, Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar, a reflective analysis of the hacker community and free software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998, and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator Internet suite as free software. This source code subsequently became the basis behind Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and KompoZer[1]. Netscape's act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring the Free Software Foundation's free software ideas and perceived benefits to the commercial software industry. They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the free software movement to emphasize the business potential of sharing and collaborating on software source code. The new name they chose was "open source", and quickly Bruce Perens, publisher Tim O'Reilly Linus Torvalds, and others signed on to the rebranding. The Open Source Initiative was founded in February 1998 to encourage use of the new term and evangelize open-source principles. While the Open Source Initiative sought to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize the principles it adhered to, commercial software vendors found themselves increasingly threatened by the concept of freely distributed software and universal access to an application's source code. A Microsoft executive publicly stated in 2001 that "open source is an intellectual property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual- property business." This view perfectly summarizes the initial response to FOSS by some software corporations. However, while FOSS has historically played a role outside of the mainstream of private software development, companies as large as Microsoft have begun to develop official open-source presences on the Internet. IBM, Oracle, Google and State Farm are just a few of the companies with a serious public stake in today's competitive open-source market. There has been a significant shift in the corporate philosophy concerning the development of free and open-source software (FOSS)[2]. The free software movement was launched in 1983. In 1998, a group of individuals advocated that the term free software should be replaced by open-source software (OSS) as an expression which is less ambiguous and more comfortable for the corporate world. Software developers may want to publish their software with an open-source license, so that anybody may also develop the same software or understand its internal functioning. With open-source software, generally anyone is allowed to create modifications of it, port it to new operating systems and processor architectures, share it with others or, in some cases, market it. Scholars Casson and Ryan have pointed out several policy-based reasons for adoption of open source – in http://www.iaeme.com/IJCET/index.asp 2 [email protected] Application of Open Source Software In Science and Engineering particular, the heightened value proposition from open source (when compared to most proprietary formats) in the following categories: Security Affordability Transparency Perpetuity Interoperability Flexibility Localization—particularly in the context of local governments (who make software decisions). Casson and Ryan argue that "governments have an inherent responsibility and fiduciary duty to taxpayers" which includes the careful analysis of these factors when deciding to purchase proprietary software or implement an open-source option. The Open Source Definition, notably, presents an open-source philosophy, and further defines the terms of usage, modification and redistribution of open-source software. Software licenses grant rights to users which would otherwise be reserved by copyright law to the copyright holder. Several open-source software licenses have qualified within the boundaries of the Open Source Definition. The most prominent and popular example is the GNU General Public License (GPL), which "allows free distribution under the condition that further developments and applications are put under the same licence", thus also free. While open-source distribution presents a way to make the source code of a product publicly accessible, the open-source licenses allow the authors to fine tune such access. The open source label came out of a strategy session held on April 7, 1998 in Palo Alto in reaction to Netscape's January 1998 announcement of a source code release for Navigator (as Mozilla). A group of individuals at the session included Tim O'Reilly, Linus Torvalds, Tom Paquin, Jamie Zawinski, Larry Wall, Brian Behlendorf, Sameer Parekh, Eric Allman, Greg Olson, Paul Vixie, John Ousterhout, Guido van Rossum, Philip Zimmermann, John Gilmore and Eric S. Raymond. They used the opportunity before the release of Navigator's source code to clarify a potential confusion caused by the ambiguity of the word "free" in English[3][1]. Many people claimed that the birth of the Internet, since 1969, started the open source movement, while others do not distinguish between open-source and free software movements. The Free Software Foundation (FSF), started in 1985, intended the word "free" to mean freedom to distribute (or "free as in free speech") and not freedom from cost (or "free as in free beer"). Since a great deal of free software already was (and still is) free of charge, such free software became associated with zero cost, which seemed anti- commercial [4]. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was formed in February 1998 by Eric S. Raymond and Bruce Perens. With at least 20 years of evidence from case histories of closed software development versus open development already provided by the Internet developer community, the OSI presented the "open source" case to commercial businesses, like Netscape. The OSI hoped that the usage of the label "open source", a term suggested by Peterson of the Foresight Institute at the strategy session, would eliminate ambiguity, particularly for individuals who perceive "free software" as anti-commercial. They sought to bring a higher profile to the practical benefits of freely available source code, and they wanted to bring major software businesses and other high-tech industries into open source. Perens attempted to http://www.iaeme.com/IJCET/index.asp