Why open source

Open Source is our mantra. Active participation in open source software development is part of our day-to-day work, and we believe the Open Source way is the new paradigm. Consequently, Hippo is strongly committed to open source and open standards in all that we do.

Open Source means that the source code of the software may be copied and distributed freely according to the license it is released under. The source code is the actual text programmers write before it's translated into a format that computers can read.

Since the source code is accessible, other programmers are able to determine for themselves whether or not the software is suitable for use within a specific context or needs to be changed. Users are therefore no longer tied to a single software supplier.

Open source software grows organically; bad ideas die out, good ideas grow and are re-used in other projects. These ideas are provided by large numbers of developers throughout the world. Jointly, they provide a basis for continuous quality control and place stringent requirements on interchangeability of software elements. This is achieved by drawing up internationally accepted standards, or Open Standards. XML is one of the most widely known of such standards.

The success of previous projects and the expertise of developers and users worldwide improve the software. Improvement in the quality of open source software is driven primarily by requirements of end-users.

Open Source software guarantees quality and continuity for the user, because:

• users are no longer dependent on the survival of the software supplier,
• users can continue to develop and change the core of the acquired software,
• users can benefit from successful developments by others who have (previously) used this software,
• open standards such as XML are used for data exchange.

The best-known open source software products are the Linux operating system, Mozilla Firefox, the Apache web server and OpenOffice.