In college I took a course in microeconomics. It was ECON101 that finally explained the maxim: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The lesson was that there is always a cost of some sort to reputedly free items, even if that cost isn’t financial (or if it isn’t yours). Let’s say your free lunch is a hamburger; a farmer has to raise the cattle, milk the cows, grow the wheat, the tomatoes, and the cucumbers which comprise that burger. There’s a cost of time and resources and the farmer deserves to be compensated. There’s also cost in processing those materials, moving them to your geographic location, assembling and cooking them, advertising them, et cetera. “Not so free now, is it?”, quips the smug economics professor.
Yet, what if the cost of making a hamburger was limited to writing the recipe? What if the cost of any meal was the time and knowledge it took to write the recipes and the cards upon which to write them? How would the world be different then? We would keep recipe books of our must-haves; we’d go out to restaurants to read their fancy, expensive recipes; and some people would hand out recipes for free, just to improve everyone’s lunch a little. Well, replace “recipe” with “software”, and you have a pretty good idea of what Open Source Software is all about.
While there are many official definitions for “open source software”, the general definition is any software that shares its source code. Source code is like the recipe for a piece of software. Sure, there’s still some cooking to do, but if you have the recipe, and you’re comfortable enough in the kitchen, you can make the meal. Source code works the same way.
The web has been a poster child for the benefits of open source software. Some of the most popular technologies, tools, and languages of the web are open source projects. You, personally, have been touched in some way by open source software; this website is powered by it!
There are many benefits to open source software. One of the most obvious benefits is to cash-strapped developers and webmasters; open source software is usually available at no cost. In fact, using open source software is often as simple as downloading the source code, dropping it onto a server, and firing up a web browser. Open source software also provides an environment of competition. The first way it does this is by keeping similar products innovative, in the same way a free market keeps similar businesses competitive.1 The second way is in the fostering of new technologies.2
Certainly, there are huge benefits to using open source software, but are there any benefits to creating open source software? L&S programmers think so. Here is the logic:
- L&S usually programs websites using Adobe ColdFusion
- The open source community for ColdFusion is small but growing
- More open source ColdFusion software means a larger community
- A larger community means more opportunities for outsourcing, partnerships, and recruiting for L&S
Worst case scenario, we add to the open source ColdFusion community with new software. Best case scenario, we discover new opportunities for outsourcing, partnerships, and recruiting. Really, it’s a win-win(-win) scenario, so why not do it?
That is why the L&S programmers are pleased to announce L&S’s first open source project: cf-password-generator! (Pause for fanfare and applause.) cf-password-generator lets users easily generate complicated, secure passwords for websites. You give it a URL; it gives you a password. It is a tool we developed internally to solve three common password questions:
- What is the administrator password for this website?
- What password should I use for this new website?
- How do we get in the habit of using better passwords?
cf-password-generator was the answer to all these questions, and we wanted to share that answer with the community.
Rest assured, there is nothing in the source code for cf-password-generator that will give hackers the ability to access L&S websites. Security and intellectual property are always concerns when a corporation decides to make a software product open source, and we’ve had to address those same concerns. While I’ll leave the specifics of how we’ve addressed those concerns to another blog post, it’s safe to say that this source code in no way comprises the security of L&S’s products.
Since this is L&S’s first step into the waters of open source software, we’re eager to get feedback. Are you a ColdFusion developer? Take cf-password-generator for a spin, and let us know how we can improve it (with your help). Do you participate in open source software? Leave a comment with any tips, tricks, or techniques. Are you a client or potential client who’s interested in learning more about open source software? Contact us; we’d love to talk with you.
- A great example of this is Firefox. Mozilla’s Firefox web browser is an open source project whose goal was to create competition for the stagnant Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser. Firefox did so well, in fact, that Microsoft was forced to improve its product after a five year lull, giving us IE7 in 2006, IE8 in 2009, and the up-coming IE9. [↩]
- Consider, if you will, the case of PHP. When PHP was first introduced in 1995, the world of web programming was woolly and wild. PHP came along as a simplified scripting language, allowing developers to more easily create dynamic websites. Better yet, it was open source. It didn’t take long for a community to build up around the product, which in turn led to numerous open source projects. [↩]
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