| Description of Open Source Support:
In general, ‘open source’ refers to any program whose source code is made freely available for use or modification. Open source software is usually developed as a public collaboration project and is made freely available, as are patches and fixes.
The Open Source community is a loose collection of highly capable and dedicated individuals who donate their time and energy to developing and maintaining software made publicly available. The major pieces of software produced and supported by this community is of very high quality. Two examples of open source software are Linux and Apache. Historically this community has responded very quickly to reported bugs and security problems, many times releasing fixes and patches sooner than commercial entities. However, since work on open source is voluntary, there are no guarantees on timeliness or quality of fixes and patches.
If we deploy Linux on a wide basis, we should join the open source community by further developing Linux skill among our staff. The in-house Linux experts would monitor the newsgroups for patches and fixes, would develop local patches and fixes in the absence of publicly available ones, and would ask for help when necessary on the various open source newsgroups.
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