Already, many faculty members at NC State are working in the open source realm, developing applications and researching development of nonproprietary code. The commercial world is also jumping on board, Averitt said, as large and small companies alike announce new open source ventures, aiming to make money by offering support and service to open source users. There are many people saying this is in their interest as consumers and as businesses. The evidence is that in the future, it will be a very viable option on a number of fronts. Miller compared the development of open source to the world of academic research, where research findings are critiqued by one s peers after being published.
Most software users don t care about the source code, but it s important that others do.
It would not benefit me personally to read the latest articles on cancer research in the medical literature. However, it s certainly to every health-care consumer s benefit that the peers within that research community review, critique and correct each other s work. Open source has the potential to benefit the software consumer in much the same way.