Social Factors
Biological
The medical community maintains the view that adopting an open source software environment, such as Linux, would increase the quality, usability, and standard of currently used professional software. Motivation to migrate has gained further support, as a means of eliminating the extensive costs often required to build specific software needs. The actual act of transitioning to open source software has been met with hesitation due to the time-critical nature of many medically vital software infrastructures (Reynolds & Wyatt, 2011).
The benefit to patients of using open source software has been established since 1970 with the development and use of the Department of Veteran Affair’s open source electronic health record system. This software was successful enough to warrant investing in modernizing the source code, which is being done by Linux distributor, Red Hat (Red Hat, Inc., 2013). The company Red Hat has had other interactions with the medical sector, including embedding their own Linux distribution package into medical systems at the Medical Center of Boston and the Florida Hospital (Red Hat, Inc., 2000, 2008). At the application level, they have also teamed up with other software conglomerates to manage Electronic Records Handling for hospitals nationwide through Epic System’s Health Record System (Dell Inc., 2013).
Culture & the economy
The Linux operating system has had a vast impact on global economics and cultures in many ways. The Linux kernel was the first software released under a full open-source license and publicly available. It is worth noting that a software license only governs how the software may be used after it is obtained or purchased. Open source software had existed since the 1950’s with researchers and educational facilities, but never entered the public domain. After researches built the protocols enabling mass Internet connections, the United States vs. IBM antitrust suit, filed 17 January 1969, prevented companies from including the cost of computer hardware used in development to be included in the cost of the software product (Lopatka, 2000). Shortly thereafter, commercial software began being released as either subscription only or free to use. Under a free license, software may be used free of charge, but alterations to the source code are not permitted.
The open source movement was revived in 1983 by Richard Stallman with the publication of the GNU Manifesto (Stallman, 1990). Widespread use of the license was limited to either machine specific architecture or small applications in the beginning. It wasn’t until Linux was registered under the 1991 GNU General Public License that free, open source software became available and functional to the public at large.
The release of a completely free, full featured, and open source operating system forever changed the software development market. The public release in 1991 was watched by software companies worldwide due to its unique production model allowing both development and maintenance to occur devoid of monetary costs. This type of development strategy had been previously thought only possible for small projects and applications (Lotufo et al., 2010). Creating an entire operating system is no easy task, even for established and dedicated development companies. The total investment required to develop an operating system (McPherson, Proffitt, & Hale-Evans, 2008) from the ground up typically ran several billion dollars, making an entirely free release unthinkable.
By 1998, Linux had garnered enough community support from software developers around the world to become a viable competitor to the powerhouse company Microsoft (Valloppillil, Cohen, & Raymond, 1998). The open source software model had overcome hurdles in securing resources, maintaining contributions, and ensuring quality previously predicted as development pitfalls. The successful development of Linux as a free operating system with competitive capabilities required software companies to ensure that their commercial software remained a step ahead of any open source equivalents (Mustonen, 2003).
Social & Political
The most prominent country to exclusively use the Linux operating system throughout all government applications is China. Linux may not yet be popular in other industrialized nations, but it has been widely adopted as an alternative to proprietary software in developing countries. Open source software has a stronger appeal in these countries not only due to the high price of proprietary software, but also because of the hardware demands that must be met by the packages as well. In Africa, the stabilized governments of Mauritius and Senegal have chosen the Linux operating system as their official infrastructure. Countries that do not have a stable and efficient government align closer with proprietary software due to the abundant availability of pirate software without any law enforcement or authoritative deterrent (James, 2001).
Educational
The open source structure of the Linux operating system provides the ideal platform to run any educational facility. Migration is hindered in established facilities, as they have grown accustomed to standards placed by the commercial software industry over decades. This has also produced over a decades worth of software specific compatibility restraints, user familiarity, and known history of stability. Despite these understandable reasons to continue using commercial products, deficits in funding have turned many universities around the world to migrate over to a Linux-based platform.
All 140,000 public schools in Mexico City have switched from proprietary to open source systems, saving the local municipality over $3 million previously spent on Microsoft licensing contracts. Also in South America, the country of Argentina has integrated Linux into the national government, universities, and law enforcement agencies (James, 2001).
Read more about the Linux timeline or view some external sources.
