Wiktionary
n. 1 (context computing English) A system allowing hardware and software from different manufacturers to be used together seamlessly. 2 (context physics English) A system that can exchange both matter and energy with its surroundings.
Wikipedia
Open systems are computer systems that provide some combination of interoperability, portability, and open software standards. (It can also refer to specific installations that are configured to allow unrestricted access by people and/or other computers; this article does not discuss that meaning).
The term was popularized in the early 1980s, mainly to describe systems based on Unix, especially in contrast to the more entrenched mainframes and minicomputers in use at that time. Unlike older legacy systems, the newer generation of Unix systems featured standardized programming interfaces and peripheral interconnects; third party development of hardware and software was encouraged, a significant departure from the norm of the time, which saw companies such as Amdahl and Hitachi going to court for the right to sell systems and peripherals that were compatible with IBM's mainframes.
The definition of "open system" can be said to have become more formalized in the 1990s with the emergence of independently administered software standards such as The Open Group's Single UNIX Specification.
Although computer users today are used to a high degree of both hardware and software interoperability, in the 20th century the open systems concept could be promoted by Unix vendors as a significant differentiator. IBM and other companies resisted the trend for decades, exemplified by a now-famous warning in 1991 by an IBM account executive that one should be "careful about getting locked into open systems".
However, in the first part of the 21st century many of these same legacy system vendors, particularly IBM and Hewlett-Packard, began to adopt Linux as part of their overall sales strategy, with " open source" marketed as trumping "open system". Consequently, an IBM mainframe with Linux on z Systems is marketed as being more of an open system than commodity computers using closed-source Microsoft Windows—or even those using Unix, despite its open systems heritage. In response, more companies are opening the source code to their products, with a notable example being Sun Microsystems and their creation of the OpenOffice.org and OpenSolaris projects, based on their formerly closed-source StarOffice and Solaris software products.
An open system is a system that has external interactions. Such interactions can take the form of information, energy, or material transfers into or out of the system boundary, depending on the discipline which defines the concept. An open system is contrasted with the concept of an isolated system which exchanges neither energy, matter, nor information with its environment. An open system is also known as a constant volume system or a flow system.
The concept of an open system was formalized within a framework that enabled one to interrelate the theory of the organism, thermodynamics, and evolutionary theory. This concept was expanded upon with the advent of information theory and subsequently systems theory. Today the concept has its applications in the natural and social sciences.
In the natural sciences an open system is one whose border is permeable to both energy and mass. In physics a closed system, by contrast, is permeable to energy but not to matter.
Open systems have a number of consequences. A closed system contains limited energies. The definition of an open system assumes that there are supplies of energy that cannot be depleted; in practice, this energy is supplied from some source in the surrounding environment, which can be treated as infinite for the purposes of study. One type of open system is the radiant energy system, which receives its energy from solar radiation – an energy source that can be regarded as inexhaustible for all practical purposes.
Open system may refer to:
Usage examples of "open system".
Science is an open system based on skeptical appeal to evidence, and uses inductive logic to formulate general principles from specific observation.
Thousands of years of history failed to teach that there is no control over free trade in an open system and little effective control even in a closed system.
And is not an open system the very definition of the organic, of life and thought?
The standards might be developed through open system with public proposals from participating engineers like the 'Request for Comment' for defining the standards of the internet.
In any open system, according to her simulations, some outside force—.
Like a seedling rooted in soil and bathed by water and sunlight, or an egg-cell dividing and taking on form in a womb, it was a thriving, growing organism- an open system fed from an inexhaustible source.