More useless tech jargon, you no doubt thought. Jargon it may be, but open source is an important piece of jargon. And it is something that users of basic technology probably need to know more about especially those interested in saving their computers from crashing all the time. In fact, my betting is that open source will become one of the hot tech issues in coming years, perhaps even involving international antimonopoly agencies like the one in the United States that took on Bill Gates over his Internet Explorer browser recently. Open source software means the building blocks of software are open for others to see.
Programmers can read and modify code to suit their application or platform.
It's the secret recipe that makes a piece of software work. Or not so secret, as the case may be. It's a neat notion and one that plays to the allegedly libertarian, ultra-democratic world that techies like to think they populate. With open source, the software becomes a living thing, evolving, constantly being tweaked and improved. Open source can be very useful, and can help stop your system from crashing, as has often happened with Microsoft's Windows platform over the years.