Open source concept came from software development process.

Traditionally software is developed in a closed and commercial environment.

Software is copyrighted and the distribution is strictly regulated.

Source code is source material of software. Source code is some what similar to raw data in Epidemiologic studies.

Source code of these commercial software is core part of their business. and highly secured and never available publicly. To secure the source code, the software development project is usually conducted by only one or maybe just a few programmers, and the process takes very long time, especially bug/problem finding and solving process is very time consuming.

Open source model is an innovative approach to software development.

Open source software is free. It is usually available on the Internet so anyone can download and easily distribute it. The source code is also open usually on the Internet. Open Source software is used by thousands of users and the source code is tested by thousands of programmers and bug/problem fixing process becomes more efficient and eventually contributes to improve the quality of the software.