Open source projects and their impacts for end-users

Nowadays, open source projects are everywhere in our lives. From the engine in our browsers to the smartphone we own to [sometimes] our computers’ operational systems, open source projects are a big part of the life of anyone who makes use of current technologies. In one of my past stories, I talked about how open source projects are good for developers, and now I’m going to talk a bit through a hybrid consumer-developer point of view (my apologies, it’s impossible for me to let go of the developer side).

If you are a technology consumer, chances are that some piece of software you use has “stopped working” at some point (while this not an accurate term, I’m trying to make this as understandable as possible). And depending on which software we’re talking about, it can take a long time before a fix comes out. Well, this is already one of the advantages of using open source products: the community surrounding such projects is usually intensely active, and bug-fixing patches comes rather quickly most of the time.

Besides that, open source solutions open ways for innovation. Used as inspiration, or even as the core of new solutions (such as WebKit, the open source layout rendering engine used in several browsers), such projects boost innovation capability by providing “building blocks” for new ideas, and with them, even more fantastic products (though not always free) for us, consumers.