The open source movement has plenty of social impact. First of all, the
``free of charge'' property of open source programs makes it possible for
nearly everyone to use useful programs. For example, the OpenOffice suite
of office productivity tools is open sourced
(http://www.openoffice.org).
Compared to the well known proprietary office suite, the cost of
``ownership'' is nothing. This makes it office productivity tools
accessible to schools and other non-profit organizations with low budgets.
Another, more subtle, impact is the use of ``open source'' concepts.
In addition to programs, the concept of ``open source'' distribution is
extended to documents and artwork.
Copyright © 2006-07-05 by Tak Auyeung
