OPEN SOURCE

Robin Williams in one of his usual explosive stand up routines enacted a sequence, in his own inimitable style,involving Bill Gates and a reporter.The reporter asks "Mr.Gates, Are you not trying to create a monopoly?" to which Gates replies "Monopoly is a stupid game,my friend,I'm trying to control the world"(read with liberal expletives).I laughed along with everyone who saw that. But it isn't very far from the truth is it?

I am writing this blog using Microsoft's word processor obviously running on the Windows platform and in all probability you are going to read this on the browser provided along with Windows.I shall be damned if i say Gates isn't controlling my virtual life. His organisation has made an almost scary pervasion into our computers banking mainly on the workings on the human psyche. Let me explain a little here. We all know how wonderful Windows is. We all started working on computers only because it was easy to work with Windows. It made things simple for us. Who would not like a gift neatly wrapped. The catch here is that you cannot really open the gift. Its all yours as long as you don't open the gift box. If you think about it,this story has all the makings of a blockbuster hollywood movie. A machiavellian businessman who has a potential life changing tool with him and seeks to control the world. He is almost successful but for a bourgeois saviour who wakes people up from their trance and makes them realize.

Only in our true life story we do not have a single saviour but a bunch of nerds and geeks doing it for us. Stalwarts like Richard Stallman and Linux Torvalds ushered in a new era.They came up with a tool which was astonishingly simple. Its not so much a tool as it is a system because it redefines our way of approaching computers. I'm talking about OPEN SOURCE. One of the basic complaints about Windows was that it was not transparent. What do you do if you are affected by a virus for which Microsoft has not released the patch yet? What do you when you see a feature in Internet explorer that makes it vulnerable to attacks? You just squat and pray that the geniuses at Microsoft will eventually solve the problem.Why can't you solve the problem? Simple. You don't have the source code of any of these programs.

Open source changes all these. This term actually applies to the source code of a software. This is made available to the general public along with the software. So next time that software poses a problem the tweaker in you does not need to die a silent death. OPEN SOURCE seeks to shatter every convention established by Mr.Bill Gates and Co. They want to straitjacket you and open source breaks all the shackles. Anyone who has used the UNIX operating system, I'm sure, will agree with me. It offers a seemingly endless array of features the most noticeable being the multi-user capability. One classic example of the utility of Open source is the evolution of LINUX OS which seamlessly combines the capabilities of UNIX with the interactivity of windows not compromising on transparency. LINUX is a collection more often called a distribution available for download.

As is most often the case, Open source has these days come to refer to a lot more than just softwares. It has become a cult. Nowadays, it exemplifies transparency and openness. Cola companies are being urged to give out their secret recipes.This is seen as a sign of Open source going beyond the realm of computers. One other example could be the use of open source in medicine which calls for open-source pharmaceutical development.

All said and done, we ( yes, we) still have a very long way to go before we can get anywhere close to challenging the Gates' hegemony but i daresay we are on the right path. So, next time your pc freezes or gives the dreaded "blue screen of death", you know what to do. UNIX has been called the greatest operating system you may never use. Let us break the myth.