Research With Open Source

Dr. Haider Abbas, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Physics, Manav Rachna University, work in the field of electronic structure calculations. He uses many open source code for his research work. During the last few years he published many research works in the journal of international repute. The research with the use of open source code is really low cost high impact. The scholar from various streams can find many valuable source-code of their research interest.

Open source software is generally free software that you can use in your research. Open source developers choose to make the source code of their software publicly available for the good of the community and to publish their software with an open source license meaning that other developers can see how it works and add to it. Open source software is developed free of charge through a community driven development process, and as such, it is also provided to the public at no cost, but under certain usage and distribution conditions. Many of the traditional software companies have tried to take advantage of the free software, not just by using the software, but also by creating quite sophisticated business models and strategies around the open source software. Examples of open source products include Open Office, the internet browser Mozilla Firefox, Wikipedia, the GNU/Linux operating system and its derivative Android, an operating system for mobile devices.

The Advantages of Open Source Software:

1. It's generally free
2. It's continually evolving in real time as developers add to it and modify it.
3. Using open source software also means you are not locked into using a particular vendor's system that only work with their other systems.
4. You can modify and adapt open source software for your own research requirements, something that is not possible with proprietary systems.

Dr. Haider Abbas

Manav Rachna University