Awareness of green computing is similar to wearing your car seat belts. From being a non existent entity in ambassadors, it became optional with the launch of Maruti 800 till it became a mandate in all modern-day cars of today. With green computing taking the center stage, Open Source has become a big driver of green technologies.

“At the onset, an Open Source software usually never comes in a box pack. This eliminates an entire industry which is related to printing and publishing,” said Venkat Mangudi, CEO, Venkat Mangudi Consulting. Also, one can work on Open source from one’s home PC without an office space and a server. This reduces lot of carbon footprint in terms of transportation and server costs.

Open Source has licences instead of contracts, said Mangudi. The GNU General Public License (GPL) is the most widely used free software license. GPL grants the recipients of a computer program, the rights of the free software definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work is changed or added to.