The leading and most profitable of software companies are based in the US. As of 2008, the client software industry is primarily controlled by Microsoft. Software Magazine’s 500 list in 2005 shows the overall amount of earnings brought in by software companies per area, with the highest being California due to Silicon Valley and the amount of Fortune 500 software companies operating in that location.

A Little History About the Software Industry

The software industry began in the early 1960s when universities and businesses initially started to utilize computers and to seek out programs to do specific computing tasks. Many of these applications were created in-house by full-time employees. Some were circulated freely among users of a particular machine for no charge. But others were made on a commercial basis, and the very first standalone software firms started in the United States in 1959-1960.

The industry grew greatly with the progress of the personal computer in the mid-1970s, which produced a growing marketplace for games, applications, and utilities. And little by little the perception that software should be bought and paid for took hold. One of the original proponents of this idea was Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft.

In the early years of the 21st century, a new lucrative business type has arisen for hosted software, called software as a service, this was at least the third time this type had been attempted. SaaS reduces the concerns about software piracy, since it can only be accessed through the Internet, and by definition no client software is installed onto the end user’s computer.

One such approach was the type19 mock radar trainer, built in 1943. From these first attempts in the WWII era through the mid 1970s, educational programs were directly tied to the hardware, ordinarily mainframe computers, on which they ran. Pioneering educational computer systems in this period included the PLATO system (1960), created at the University of Illinois, and TICCIT (1969).

In 1963, IBM had established a joint venture with Stanford University’s Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences, directed by Patrick Suppes, to develop the earliest complete CAI elementary school curriculum which was implemented on a large scale in schools in both California and Mississippi.

Early terminals that ran learning systems cost more than $10,000, putting them out of reach of nearly all institutions. Some programming languages from this time, particularly BASIC (1963), and LOGO (1967) can additionally be considered educational, as they were specifically targeted to students and novice PC users.

Different Types of Educational Software

Children’s learning: A large number of titles, most likely running into the thousands, were created and released from the mid-1990’s onwards, aimed primarily at the home-based education of younger kids. Later iterations of these titles generally began to link educational material to school curricula.

The design of educational software applications for home use has been influenced strongly by computer gaming concepts. However, as far as feasible a distinction ought to be drawn between proper learning titles and software where the gaming outweighs the instructive value.

Reference software: Most publishers of print dictionaries and encyclopedias have been involved in the creation of instructive reference programs since the mid-1990s. They were united in the reference software marketplace by both start-up companies and established software publishers.

Educational computer games: These are games which were originally created for adults or older children and which have impending learning implications. For the most part, these games provide simulations of various types of human activities, allowing players to explore a variety of social, historical and economic processes.

The phrase open source software began as part of a marketing campaign for free applications. A report by the Standish Group states that use of open source software models has contributed in savings of roughly $60 billion per year to end users.

Some History Behind Open Source Software

The free software movement was started in 1983. In 1998, a collection of persons advocated that the label free software ought to be replaced by open source software as an example which is not as unclear and more comfortable for the corporate world. Software creators might wish to distribute their programs with an open source license, so that any person may also develop the same software or understand its inner functions.

Open source software normally permits a person to create modifications of the software, port it to additional operating systems and CPU architectures, share it with others or sell it.  All of which are not permitted in commercial software packages.

Open Source typically presents an open source viewpoint, and further defines the conditions of usage, modification and redistribution of open source software. Software licenses grant rights to any person which would otherwise be held in reserve by copyright law to the copyright holder. Several open source software licenses have qualified inside the boundaries of the Open Source Definition. The most prominent and prevalent instance is the GNU General Public License (GPL).

While open source distribution presents a way to appoint the source codes of a product publicly available, the open source licenses permit the authors to fine tune such access.

Open Source Licensing

A license defines the privileges and obligations that a licensor grants to a user. Open Source licenses permit licensees the right to emulate, adapt and redistribute source code. These licenses may possibly also impose obligations, or modifications to the code that are circulated have got to be made obtainable in source code form, an author attribution has to be placed in a software documentation using that Open Source, etc.

Authors originally derive a right to grant a license to their effort based on the legal theory that upon conception of a product the author owns the copyright in that product. The author still retains ownership of those copyrights, the licensee simply is permitted to utilize those rights, as granted in the license, so long as they uphold the obligations of the license. The author does have the option to sell/assign, versus license, their exclusive entitlement to the copyrights to their labor; where upon the new owner/assignee controls the copyrights.

Additional Information

Open Source development is commonly performed within the public eye, using services provided for free on the Internet, such as the Launchpad and SourceForge web sites, and utilizing tools that are themselves Open Source, mashing together the CVS and Subversion source control systems, and the GNU Compiler Collection.

These limitations are protected by either official or technical methods, or both. The most ordinary form of technical restriction is by releasing programs that are simply computer-readable, and preserving the human-readable source code. Lawful methods of enforcement include copyright perhaps with a restrictive software license) and patents. The source code of such programs is generally regarded as a trade secret by the proprietor. Access to source code by third parties usually requires the person concerned to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Use of software is protected by contract law through either an specific software license agreement or by shrink wrap licensing.

Well recognized examples of proprietary software include Microsoft Windows, RealPlayer, iTunes, Google Earth and Skype, though there are tons more out there.

Software distributions considered as proprietary may possibly incorporate a “mixed source” example mashing together both free and non-free applications in the same distribution. The majority, if not all so-called proprietary UNIX distributions are varied source software, bundling open source components like BIND, Sendmail, X Window System, DHCP, and others along with a purely proprietary kernel and system utilities.

The end-user license agreement (EULA) for a variety of programs can constrain user privileges even more than traditional copyright. For instance, the EULA for Microsoft Windows states that the program “is licensed, not sold”. Restrictions to the software’s use include installing to single workstation for a simple license, and limits the amount of connections with “computers or other electronic devices”.

Some proprietary software comes with source code or else provides offers to the source code. Users are able to make use of and even study and alter the software in these instances, but are restricted by either licenses or non-disclosure agreements from redistributing modifications or sharing the software.

A few free software packages are additionally available under proprietary provisions. Examples include MySQL, Sendmail and ssh. The original copyright holders for a piece of free software, even copyleft free software, can make use of dual-licensing to permit themselves or others to redistribute proprietary versions. Non-copyleft free software allows any person to create proprietary re-distributions.

For particular proprietary software where the user can access source code, such as online programs or Java applications, various developers will obfuscate the source code in an effort to render it more challenging for users to get hold of the original code.

Proprietary software that is no cost is called freeware. Shareware, like freeware, is proprietary software presented at zero cost, but is different in being free of charge merely for a trial period, after which certain restriction is forced or the program may be completely disabled all together. Proprietary software which is no longer marketed by its proprietor and is used devoid of authorization by users is often referred to as abandonware and may possibly include source code. Certain abandonware has the source code released to the public domain either by its author or copyright holder and is therefore free software, and no longer proprietary software.

Computer programs are commonly regarded in the role of anything but hardware, which means that the “hard” are the parts that are physical while the “soft” part is the intangible objects found inside of the computer itself. Software encompasses an exceptionally broad array of products and technologies created using various techniques like programming languages, scripting languages, microcode, or an FPGA configuration.

The types of applications include web pages created by technologies such as HTML, PHP, Perl, JSP, ASP.NET, XML, and desktop programs like OpenOffice, Microsoft Word created by technologies like C, C++, Java,or C#.  Software generally runs on an underlying software operating systems such as the Linux or Microsoft Windows.  Software also includes video games and the logic systems of forward-looking consumer products such as automobiles, televisions, even toasters.

Software can include such items as web pages, programs or video games, that are coded by a variety of different programming languages like C or C++.  The term “Software” is from time to time used in a much broader context to mean something which is not hardware but which is used with computer hardware, this may include film, tapes and in some cases even records.

Software’s Unique Relationship to Computer Hardware

Computer software is so called to distinguish it from PC hardware, which is a broad term designed to encompass the physical interconnections and devices necessary to warehouse and carry out the software. At the lowest level, software consists of a machine language restricted to an individual processor. A machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying CPU instructions that alter the state of the PC from its preceding state. Software is an ordered sequence of directives for changing the state of the computer hardware in a specific sequence. It is generally written in high-level programming languages that are easier and more efficient for people to use than machine language.

The phrase “software” was originally used in this sense by John W. Tukey in 1958. In computer science and software engineering, computer software is all computer programs. The theory that is the foundation for most current applications was initially planned by Alan Turing in his 1935 essay Computable figures with an application to the Entscheidungs problem.

Different kinds of Software

Applied computer systems divide software programs into 3 main classes: System software, programming software and application software, even though the distinction is arbitrary, and commonly blurred.

System software

System software helps run the PC hardware and computer system. It often includes a combination of the following:

• device drivers
• operating systems
• servers
• utilities
• windowing systems

The intention of systems software is to relieve the applications programmer from the details of the individual computer complex being used, together with such accessory products as communications, printers, readers, displays and keyboards, and additionally to partition the computer’s assets such as memory and processor time in a safe and balanced approach.

Programming software

Programming applications typically provides tools to help a programmer in creating computer programs, and applications using assorted programming languages in a more suitable way. The tools include:

• compilers
• debuggers
• interpreters
• linkers
• text editors

An Integrated development environment or (IDE) is a individual application that tries to handle all these functions.

Application software

Application software permits end users to complete 1 or more specialized tasks. Characteristic applications include:

• manufacturing automation
• small business software
• computer games
• quantum chemistry and solid state physics software
• telecommunications
• databases
• learning programs
• medical software
• military software
• commercial software
• molecular modeling software
• image editing
• spreadsheet
• word processing
• decision making software

The Quality and Reliability of Software

Software quality is extremely crucial, especially for commercial and system software like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows and Linux.  If software is faulty, it can delete a person’s work, crash the PC and do other unexpected items.

Faults and errors are often called “bugs.”  Many bugs are revealed and eliminated through software testing.  Although, software testing seldomly – if ever – gets rid of every bug.  In fact, a number of programmers say that “every program has at least one more bug”.

All key software companies, such as Microsoft, Novell and Sun Microsystems, control their own software testing departments with the particular goal of just testing.  Programs can be tested through unit testing, regression testing and other methods, which are completed manually, or most commonly, without human intervention, since the amount of code to be tested can be pretty substantial. For example, NASA has exceptionally rigorous software testing procedures for its Space Shuttle and other programs because faulty programs can crash the entire program and make the vehicle not functional, at significant expense.

Software Licenses

The software’s license gives the user the permission to use the program in the approved environment.  Some software comes with the license when purchased off the shelf, or an OEM license when bundled with hardware. Other software comes with a free software license, granting the user the rights to change and redistribute the software.  Software can also be in the form of freeware or shareware.

Software Design and Implementation

Design and implementation of software varies depending on the complexity of the software.  For example, design and construction of Microsoft Word software may take much longer time than designing and developing Microsoft Notepad because of the difference in functionalities in each one.

Software is usually designed and created in integrated development environments (IDE) like emacs, xemacs, Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse that can simplify the process and compile the software.  As noted in another section, software is ordinarily produced on top of existing software and the application programming interface (API) that the underlying software provides like GTK+, JavaBeans or Swing. Libraries (APIs) are categorized for various purposes.

For example, JavaBeans library is used for designing enterprise applications, Windows Forms library is used for designing graphical user interface (GUI) applications like Microsoft Word, and Windows Communication Foundation is used for designing web services.  Underlying PC programming concepts like quicksort, hashtable, array, and binary tree can be beneficial to creating software. When a program is designed, it relies on the API. For example, if a user is designing a Microsoft Windows desktop application, he/she might use the .NET Windows Forms library to design the desktop application and call its APIs like Form1.Close() and Form1.Show() to close or open the application and write the additional operations him/herself that it need to have.  Devoid of these APIs, the programmer would need to write these APIs him/herself.

Companies like Sun Microsystems, Novell, and Microsoft provide their own APIs so that many programs are written utilizing their application libraries that generally have numerous APIs in them.

Computer Software: Industry and Organizations

Software has its own niche industry that is called the software industry made up of numerous entities and peoples that generate software, and as a end result there are numerous software companies and programmers in the world.  Because software is increasingly used in numerous unique areas like in finance, searching, mathematics, space exploration, gaming and mining and such, software companies and people usually concentrate in certain areas.  For example, Electronic Arts primarily creates video games.

Several of the well recognized software companies include Microsoft, Oracle, Novell, Adobe and Corel.