Online communities are coming together like never before to promote the use of open source. Economic Times speaks to Viral Shah , CEO, Julia to understand why Open Source has become so popular.By strict definition, open source software is basically a software wherein a copyright holder provides the right to study, change and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.But, open source is really not about getting a great software for free, its true power lies in the philosophy behind it- collaboration.More minds can enhance a product than one mind or one company. Tech behemoths like Google Facebook and others have made significant contributions to the open source world.There are a lot of ways that one can make money from open source software — offering training, targeted ads, customisation for certain additional functionalities and offering paid support, among others. But increasingly we are seeing open source business models follow the software-asa-service (SaaS) model. New models will definitely emerge," said Viral Shah, CEO of open source language Julia.Again, this goes back to the idea of open collaboration.

Source: Economic Times January 29, 2018 04:52 UTC