Many societies believe in the idea of Afterlife. As far as the human life is concerned, I do not believe in this supernatural concepts. However, when it comes to software “lives”, I believe in eternity (a life without death). I believe that a software can live eternally without the death faced by the lesser mortals, by adopting open source licensing model. A proprietary software dies mostly with the company or with the ones that acquires the original company. However, open source software, even if it is tied to a particular company, does not die with the company. It is usually cloned or forked and developed by volunteers or another company interested in solving the problems for a niche group of customers. As long as there is an itch in the hands of at least a handful of users, open source software will continue to live. Even if no one is interested in a particular open source software, it will continue to live in one of the open source repositories waiting to be consumed by some soul sometime in the future. This is clearly not the case with proprietary software. In short, my argument is that if the software is released as open source, it can still be useful even after the developer(s) or company behind the software vanish in thin air. (more…)