Endless Possibilities : The Open Source revolution 

Free/Open Source [FOSS] is a software development methodology that brought distinctive advantages over the traditional proprietary method of software development. Apart from the fact that the source-code is openly available, distributed peer review, transparency of process, better quality, more flexibility, lower cost and no vendor lock-in are among the key benefits of this revolutionary method.

 Respere is dedicated towards FOSS and strongly believe that open-source as a viable business model for its range of customers around the world.

Among the numerous advantages of being an open source software project, transparency is one of the key factors. Due to its inherent transparency, Governments and various private sector organizations including small to large NGOs are quite comfortable with  deploying Sahana within their infrastructure without the need to compromise the existing security concerns and polices.

Better quality source code is another significant advantage in free/open source software, which ultimately leads to better and more securedproducts. Most of the free/open source projects are community driven, hence the number of eyes that go through the code can be quite huge. Thus the tendency to find any existing problems in the code is significantly high and and the number of peers means cleaner more stable code. Even if someone did introduce problem commonly known as bugs accidentaly, it will get corrected by a peer without a much delay.

Less cost is another good advantage in the free/open source software. Some of the sections are developed by the different groups or teams: thus the development cost and the time is shared. Also reusing the code is an extremely common factor in open-source projects, hence reducing lots of money and effort.

Zero vendor lock-in is another key factor in free/open source software. Since the source is available, any organization can adapt it to their own needs with or without of the help of a 3rd party vendor.

Please read the Open Source Software definition and Free software definition for more information on this.