[ Thanks to BeOpen
for this link. ]
“In recent years, Internet commerce has shown insane popularity
and growth. Names such as “Amazon” or “Yahoo” are just as familiar
as “McDonalds”. What does this mean to commerce? It means instead
of handing out bills and coins, your money is whizzing around on
the Net, going straight from system to system without hard
currency. A study by the National Automated Clearing House
Association has shown that while only 3% of monetary transactions
are electronic, 89% of transfered money is electronic. This means
that while you may hand over a dollar bill for a coffee every day,
you may be transferring a thousand dollars electronically every
week.”
“Physical money is easy to protect. Armored safes, armed
guards, and alarm monitoring systems all make keeping hard currency
safe an easier job. But when there is no hard currency, what can
protect your funds? The answer is computer security, one of
the most crucial components of online commerce. And how do we
ensure that our computers are secure? Through Open Source, of
course!’
“What is open source again? Geeks, Unix, and long beards all
come to mind. But what open source really means is collaboration
and good karma. There is a lot more to it than giving away your
source code. Open source means people working together for a better
product. The development process involves a lot of contributing
people, some users, some programmers, constantly testing and fixing
the program. They probably all have different motives. Some people
may want to use the code for their own projects, and others may
just be there for entertainment (these people love to code,
remember).”