Role of Free and Open Source software in Artificial Intelligence field

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), as the name implies, tells us that the source code of the software is open and anyone can see how it works and with specific knowledge can work to get it rid of virus or privacy violations. Offering free access, it means that anyone can work on the software to whatever depth they want, offerin g the whole software back to the community for public use and benefit.

In the world of Microsoft offerings, the Free and Open Sourec Software ofered by the Gnu/Linux group and Linux Foundation was a source of inspiration to kickstart the Internet revolution. Open Source software on the other hand, only the source code is open, the rights to edit the source code is with the organisation releasing the open source software, eg. Google and its Android OS.   

ChatGPT has this to say, 

Open-source software is software that is available to the public for use and modification. It is typically developed by a community of volunteers, who work together to improve the software and share their modifications with others.

One of the key features of open-source software is that the source code is made available to the public. This allows anyone to view, modify, and distribute the source code, as long as they follow the terms of the open-source license that the software is released under. This allows for a high level of collaboration and innovation, as developers can build upon and improve upon the work of others.

There are many advantages to using open-source software.  

• It can be freely used and modified by anyone, which can lead to a diverse range of applications and a large and active community of users and developers.  
• It can also be more secure and reliable, as the source code is available for anyone to review and identify potential vulnerabilities.  

Many of the most popular and widely-used software tools and platforms are open source, including the Linux operating system, the Apache web server, and the TensorFlow machine learning library.

Because of the  free use of the software libraries in AI, the growth of the software system instead of being linear is exponential. The field of Internet also saw the fast growth thanks to the use of Free and Open Source software like Apache webserver, the kernel for the Operating system put by Linus Torvalds etc. the development in the Internet area was exponential. Thanks to Google, Android was a free software based on Linux given free to the world. Almost 100% of the Fortune 500 companies work with Linux / FOSS as their backend.

Tensor Flow, the basic software library for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence was released as Free and Open Source by Google in 2015, meaning anyone from around the world can work on it and improvise it for the benefit of mankind.

TensorFlow is a free and open-source software library for machine learning and artificial intelligence. It can be used across a range of tasks but has a particular focus on training and inference of deep neural networks.

TensorFlow was developed by the Google Brain team for internal Google use, but it was released as an open-source library in 2015. It has since become one of the most widely-used machine learning libraries in the world, with a large and active community of users, contributors, and developers.

TensorFlow is designed to be flexible and efficient, with a focus on running machine learning models on a variety of platforms, from desktop and server environments to mobile devices. It can be used for a wide range of applications, including image and speech recognition, natural language processing, and predictive modeling.

Thanks to the Free and Open Source Community, the field of Artificial Intelligence is also bound to grow exponentiall in the coming years.

George.