The Impact of Open Source Software on Smartphones Industry

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Key Terms in this Chapter

Android: Android is an open source Linux-based operating system design for touchscreen smart mobile devices (smartphones and tablet computers). Google and Open Handset Alliance (a consortium of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies such as Samsung, HTC, Qualcomm, and T-Mobile) back Android.

Proprietary Software: Proprietary software is commercial software where the core is kept secret by the developer, users of the software have to pay license fee, and users even do not have the right to lend the software to their colleagues let alone to modify.

Smartphone: A smartphone is a mobile phone the let one not only making telephone calls, sending short messages, but also surf the Internet, playing games, listening music, watching movies and other capability normally provided by a computers such as writing and editing documents, sending and receiving emails and run myriad of available apps.

Open Source Software (OSS): Open source software share the same principle of FS. According to Richard Stallman 'free software' and 'open source' describe the same category of software, more or less, but say different things about the software, and about values. He further said, “The Free Software Movement and Open Source Movement are two political parties in the same community”

Free Software (FS): FS has been introduced by Richard Stallman to denote users freedom to execute it for any purpose, replicate, modify and redistribute copies of the original or modified software. “Free” in the free software refers to freedom, not refer to price. Free software is under copyleft , a distribution concept to make sure that software under this term is always free.