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132 Chapter 4 Hardware, Software, and Mobile Systems
Software Source

O-the-shelf
O-the-shelf Custom-developed
and then
customized
Horizontal
Software applications
Type Vertical
applications

Figure 4-15 One-of-a-kind
applications
Software Sources and Types

Because of the risk and expense, custom development is the last-choice alternative, used
only when there is no other option. Figure 4-15 summarizes software sources and types.

What Is Firmware?

Firmware is computer software that is installed into devices such as printers, print serv-
ers, and various types of communication devices. The software is coded just like other
software, but it is installed into special, read-only memory of the printer or other device. In
this way, the program becomes part of the device’s memory; it is as if the program’s logic is
designed into the device’s circuitry. Therefore, users do not need to load firmware into the
device’s memory. Firmware can be changed or upgraded, but this is normally a task for IS
professionals.

Q4 Is Open Source Software a Viable Alternative?

To answer this question, you first need to know something about the open source movement
and process. Most computer historians would agree that Richard Matthew Stallman is the father
of the movement. In 1983, he developed a set of tools called GNU (a self-referential acronym
meaning GNU Not Unix) for creating a free Unix-like operating system. Stallman made many
other contributions to open source, including the GNU general public license (GPL) agree-
ment, one of the standard license agreements for open source software. Stallman was unable to
attract enough developers to finish the free Unix system but continued making other contribu-
tions to the open source movement.
In 1991, Linus Torvalds, working in Helsinki, began work on another version of Unix, us-
ing some of Stallman’s tools. That version eventually became Linux, the high-quality and very
popular operating system discussed previously.
The Internet proved to be a great asset for open source, and many open source projects
became successful, including:
• LibreOffice (default office suite in Linux distributions)
• Firefox (a browser)
• MySQL (a DBMS, see Chapter 5)
• Apache (a Web server, see Chapter 6)
• Ubuntu (a Windows-like desktop operating system)
• Android (a mobile device operating system)
• Cassandra (a NoSQL DBMS, see Chapter 5)
• Hadoop (a BigData processing system, see Chapter 9)