Information technology enables a level of collaboration in certain activities that was inconceivable before. Many have found themselves writing simultaneously on the same shared document, effectively contributing with four or six hands, significantly boosting productivity without compromising quality. Another classic example of multi-party collaboration is Wikipedia. When it comes to creating the source code of a program, a very similar method is used, allowing hundreds, if not thousands or more, of programmers to work on the same project. There are no special requirements; a user who identifies a ‘bug’ (logical or programming error) or wants to add new features to an existing program corrects or adds a portion and then reports their changes to the project’s managers with a simple click. These managers will decide whether or not to incorporate those modifications. The process described here, which may seem cumbersome at first, is actually automatically managed by a protocol called GIT. Through this protocol, you can download code to your computer or upload modified code to a specifically defined virtual “place.”

For source code to be modifiable, integrable, etc., by strangers, it must be openly accessible. When this happens, the code is considered open source. In contrast to the concept of open source, there is closed source. Let’s take Microsoft as an example: they produce the Microsoft Office suite, which includes the well-known Word, Excel, Outlook, and more. To create this product, programmers have written the source code, but it is not released on the internet. It’s somewhat like going to a restaurant where you can enjoy delicious dishes, but you often can’t know exactly what you’re eating or what the recipe is. Nobody outside of Microsoft developers can contribute to the programming of Microsoft Office or inspect the code to check for errors, bugs, or malicious parts (which might steal data from users).

As alternatives to Microsoft’s suite, we can mention LibreOffice and OpenOffice. The source code for both is open and easily accessible online. Both products, precisely because they are open source, are also free.

The website where the source code for these two open-source programs is stored is github.com: it is the world’s most widely used platform for open-source software and, paradoxically, was acquired at a high price by Microsoft a few years ago. Delving into the history of these two software programs is not particularly interesting for the purpose of this discussion, except to note that LibreOffice is essentially a fork of OpenOffice.