You'll notice I talk a lot about Open Source but you may not be aware of what it is. Without getting overly-technical, Open Source is when the actual source code
(source code is like the blueprint and map to the software) is freely available to anyone. Most large for-profit companies won't do open-source because it's essentially giving away the code that could 1) make their software less secure, 2) allow people to copy what they've done thus stealing valuable profits, or 3) modifying the code beyond what it was intended to do.A common question is that because the source code is available anyone can create a virus for it and exploit potential gaps in security. While this is very true, for the most part it just doesn't happen. I personally have been using open source software and recommending it to customers for many years. The largest advantage is that it's free. But aside from that, there are groups of programmers all across the world working to plug up any security holes but also to create modifications of the software to allow you to do so much more than the original programmers ever dreamed of doing or could do (because it's free, after-all) without the programming community.