Open source app development or open source software development is a methodology by which all types of software, whose source codes are publicly available, are made. The open source license gives software developers the right to study, alter, and improve the design of applications without permission from the host.
Open source app development or open source software development is a methodology by which all types of software,
whose source codes are publicly available, are made. The open source license gives software developers the right to study, alter, and improve the design of applications without permission from the host. The open source application development methodology also promotes free access & redistribution to the implementation details & end design of a software. Popular examples of open source software in use in the current computing world are Android, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium, and Apache OpenOffice Suite. The progress, communication, and coordination with an open source community have been recorded in the recent past. Even as early as two years ago, open source application development was a much unstructured framework since proper development tools were not available.
Types of Open Source Application Development Projects
There are different types of open source app development projects which one can access from libraries & software programs.
1. While there are standalone code projects, developers can also access open source projects which are dependent on another such project. Popular examples of such open source app development projects are Linux kernel, the office suite of tools under Apache OpenOffice, and the Firefox web browser. Every open source code project serves a specific purpose & fulfills definite computing needs.
2. Distributions or group of software published from one source and having a common purpose are also open source app development projects. Operating systems such as Fedora Core, Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, and Slackware are popular examples of distributions.
3. Projects such as BSD derivatives that help in maintaining the source codes of whole operating systems are also classified under open source app development projects. These projects help in integrating tools in the distribution based systems.
4. Lastly, a standalone document project can also be classified as open source app development units. These are projects that document different aspects of Linux/GNU operating systems.
Steps to Work on an Open Source Application Development Project:
The different ways in which one can work on open source app development projects are:
1. There should be an intent to develop such projects in public. In this case, an individual developer may receive help from other groups who work on the writing of codes together.
2. All developers working on codebases should release them in the mobile market along with the initial version of open source programs. Only after the first version of open source apps are released can a developer start working on improving its quality along with help from other developers.
3. The source codes of mature projects must be released in the market in the form of in house software or proprietary software.
4. If a source code app project has a unique or innovative idea, it should be forked with interested third parties. The group of app developers then starts work on a new project, the source code of which may diverge from the original.
The best part of open source application development is that the developers do not have to work on projects in proximity. The presence of electronic means of communication such as emails, electronic mailing lists, instant messaging methods like IRC, and Wikis are sufficient to carry out the successful designing & running of open source application development projects.
