Argumentative Essay: Should You Use An Open Source?

If you have ever met an open source enthusiast, you’ve probably heard their reasons behind why they believe it is the best and only way of the Internet. It is undeniable just how many benefits open source software offers, but the most controversial question today is do those benefits outweigh the negatives? If you are unaware of what open source is, here is a quick summary that those of us who aren’t technically inclined can understand; it’s free to use, you can customize it, security problems can be seen quickly and anybody can fix internet bugs. Benefits of open source are that it improves quality, it keeps costs down, it mitigates business risk and it delivers business agility.
Contrary to these facts, what most open source enthusiasts …show more content…
The Internet Explorer team decided against the open source WebKit for two reasons; a practical decision and because they felt it was “important to counter movement towards a monoculture on the web.” It’s suspected that the term “monoculture” was referring to Blink, which is a rendering engine that Google Chrome uses.
Although some of the largest tech companies are going against open source, there is one industry that remains to be one of the most impacted by open source, and that is the Healthcare industry. In 2014, there was an open source project called KwaMoja, which was an enterprise resource planning system used to manage resources in hospitals, such as inventory, in low-budget hospitals in Kenya and Tanzania. It became so successful, that it is used in most East African hospitals. According to opensource.com, there are also open source projects that are currently in the works, with the goals of creating more awareness of medical issues to rural areas and developing countries. Other open source projects within the medical field include creating web portals, which serve over 750 clinics, hospitals, outpatient facilities and rehab centers. It is projects such as these that give open source a good