With today's software development needs, companies, organisations and governments are coming to rely on open source software projects more and more.

Open source software can provide considerable benefit to both the users or integrators of the software and the original authors alike.

For the author of an open source project it may be possible to attract a considerable amount of expert help in developing their system. Authors may benefit from the innovation of others who contribute ideas, code, documentation and translations. Often a system which would be impossible for one person to make becomes possible when open sourced. Authors may sell their work or more commonly sell services associated with it.

End users may find mature software systems that they can often use for no up- font costs. End users may examine the internal workings of the software and learn from it, they can personally scrutinize it for security holes or other issues and they can add new features to it that they need.

However, with the use of many types of open source software certain responsibilities exist which need to be considered carefully in the light of your particular business needs.

Bit-Simple has extensive experience in the arena of open source software, having successfully completed many projects for a wide variety of customers, that have integrated open source components or relied upon open source tools.

We are aware of the different licenses that exist and are familiar with the responsibilities and benefits that each confers* as well as the occasions when open source might not be the most appropriate path to take.

We regularly evaluate new open source tools, frameworks and applications to offer our customers the best and most cost-effective solutions to their I.T. problems.

Bit-Simple also has the skill sets to create new feature sets or customisations for existing open source projects.

At the moment we have two products in the planning stage which we intend to release under open source licenses, please visit our site often to see future announcements about this.

*Bit-Simple Technologies Ltd. are not legal experts and cannot offer legal advice, we would advise any customer who is integrating or planning to integrate a third party product, whether it is open source or not, to seek professional legal advice when considering the licensing terms.