What is Open Source?

The main differentiating factor between freeware and open source software is the fact that in freeware only the application is available free of cost – users are not permitted to modify or improvise the source code.

Why Open Source?

In open source tools, the application and its source code – which is the DNA of the product – are made available to the end-user, who is free to alter it according to the requirement.

The product constantly remains in the process of evolution when programmers are able to read, redistribute, and modify the source code. Users improve it, adapt it, and fix bugs – and all this can happen at an astonishing speed when compared with the slow pace of conventional software development.

Open source advocates believe that this rapid evolutionary process produces better software than the traditional closed model, in which only a very few programmers can see the source and everybody else must blindly use an opaque block of bits.

The common misconception is that open source only means access to the source code. Open source products are required to go beyond by complying with criteria such as allowing free redistribution, inclusion of source code that is the preferred form of modification, permitting modifications and derived works, not discriminating against any person or group of persons and not restricting anyone from making use of the program in a specific field.

The Objective of our Initiative

It is a widely recognized fact that in India the usage of computers remains restricted to a minority because it requires knowledge of English. The chief objective of Panacea’s initiative is to take computing to the common man by structuring it in the language he speaks, because only then will computing truly become a mass phenomenon.

It is Panacea’s aim to engineer this much-needed change so that the usage of computers, which increases efficiency and improves processes, does not remain the privilege of the English-educated.

The rationale behind offering open source tools is that it galvanizes the developer community and enables the next generation to innovate and improvise on the available products to its requirements. It would also be a pioneering effort as no Windows-based Tamil software has ever been released as open source.