Computersight -

Open-source software goes beyong being free. If from a freeware application you can expect no costs, from an open-source one you can expect the same, plus the ability to tweak it in ways you never thought developers would allow you to.
And not only that.

For example, a few years ago I was using a Terminal application in Linux. This open-source software is called Yakuake and enables one to have a drop-down terminal window in the style of the one found in the Quake game series. With the push of a button I can access the console and make it disappear just as easy.

The only shortcoming of Yakuake at the time was that it didn’t insert copied content from the clipboard by using Shift+Insert. I really needed that feature as my mouse’s middle button/scroll wheel was broken and I always forgot to buy a new one. So I wrote the developer asking him if he could implement that certain feature. Believe it or not, in 12 hours there was a new version of Yakuake available for download with my much-needed copy/paste from keyboard option.
Now… would I have gotten the same quick response from, say, Adobe? If I needed a certain feature in Flash 10 for Linux, how much would it have took to even get a human-written reply?
 
No Bureaucracy
 

This is the power of open-source: since open-source applications make their source-code available, either you or someone else with coding abilities can take the files, implement a requested feature and make a binary available in no time. There’s no reading EULAs, asking for permission from a software company or fear you might not be allowed to distribute it.
The best example of how open-source can make software better is Linux. In 1991, only a handful of people were using it. In 2000 it was still regarded as a server operating system. Now, Linux has a market share of 10% of the operating system market and is more widely spread on the desktop than on the server part.
People embraced Linux, tweaked it, modified it to fit the need of the user not the need of a company to spare cash and man power. There are hundreds of thousands of names, each belonging to a person who contributed code to either the Linux kernel or the Linux userland. 
Linux spread like wildfire in the last few years, from desktop systems to mobile and embedded devices, all because of the open-source license that allows you to freely download and modify it as it pleases you.
 
No Spyware
 
Another advantage open-source software gives the user is that… well… it is open. In other words, you can’t hide malicious software in open code. No trojans, no adware, no spyware. Only clean code that you can count on and run in binary form without the fear of malevolent consequences. If by any chance an open-source program does display ads or hides spyware, you can just grab it from another source or compile it yourself, but this never happened to me in 10 years.
 
Building Bridges
 

And then there is portability. An open-source application can function on any operating system that has a compiler or interpreter installed for the code the application is written in. I can take a small Linux application and compile it in FreeBSD, modify it to run on Windows or port it to OS X, just because I want to use it on those platforms.

I don’t have to account to no one while doing this, no company to beg for a port or emulating software do depend on. As long as all the needed files are open-source and my time and programming knowledge can afford it, I can create a port for it to run on a different operating system that it was previously designed.
 
Collaboration
 
The final and one of the most important reasons open-source software works so well, is because of communities. I don’t have to write the application by myself. I can design it from the ground up and use it to fit my needs. If someone else wants a new feature and I don’t have the time to implement it, there will always be a third party willing to help. Thirty people can write a complex application, each by working on a different segment of code. Five of them take care of the user interface, two of them debug the existing code, one does the icons and graphics, and so on. Not only will the software be ready to use more faster but it will also pass under 29 more pairs of eyes and different opinions, so the end result will be satisfactory to everyone.
 
Conclusion
 
So this is why I find the open-source model superior to the closed-source one, bot from the end user and programmer’s point of view. It works, it is safe and in many ways faster. You don’t have to pay for it and this can be a incredible plus when you embark in a business that uses computers. Cutting costs should be a priority when trying to make money with software, and open-source might just be the best answer.