Is Open Source Good for Global Health?
Dykki Settle
Everywhere you turn these days, it seems that global health is going digital. New terms like eHealth, mHealth, and telehealth have sprung into common usage in meetings, email lists, communities of practice and journals alike. A concept frequently used, misused and generally debated in all of these forums is Open Source.
What exactly is Open Source? You'll hear it's Linux vs. Windows, OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office, Firefox vs. Internet Explorer, but what makes it different? What makes it useful? What makes it valuable for global health?
Open Source is most clearly defined as a kind of license governing how software, once created, can be shared, adapted and reused. The Open Source Initiative maintains the (largely) community-recognized definition of Open Source. According to the initiative, software is Open Source if it can be legally and freely:
- Shared: Distributed without cost or restriction
- Adapted: Easily and legally modified by other developers (usually from the software's source code: the form of the software that is written and changed during development)
- Reused: new works may be built from it, in whole or in part.
There are fine hairs to be split here, but that's the spirit.
