What is Open Source Software?
From Wikipedia:
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product’s source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology. Before the term open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; open source gained hold with the rise of the Internet, and the attendant need for massive retooling of the computing source code.
Opening the source code enabled a self-enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths, and interactive communities. Subsequently, the new phrase “open-source software” was born to describe the environment that the new copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues created.
Open source software is given free under a General Public License (GPL). A free software license is a software license which grants recipients rights to modify and redistribute the software, which would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law. A free software license grants, to the recipients, freedoms in the form of permissions to modify or distribute copyrighted work. This freedom is not binary and licenses can allow the user more or less freedom.
This allows anyone to develop the software as they need.
So why do people give this away for free?
Open source software is given away freely but it then allows developers like us to sell our services, and contributors to sell their plugins, addons and other extras that can be used to extend the basic software core.
What are the risks?
Like anything in software (even from Microsoft) when you open your presence via the internet to the world some unscrupulous people (with nothing better to do) may look to exploit software vulnerabilities and try to “hack” your site.
Developers in the open source community generally try and provide a number of safeguards and patches to protect the software. HOWEVER, the internet is an ever changing world and new vulnerabilities are possible “holes” can emerge so we all must be vigilant.
Although Voicecom Technologies take all reasonable care to secure and monitor sites as best we can, we offer NO guarantees that internet facing websites will not be attacked or attempted to be attacked.
Therein lies the risk.