Most operating systems come with pre-installed software, sometimes officially made by the vendors. Take for instance Windows 7, with Microsoft including programs such as Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer. Open source programs such as VLC Media Player and Mozilla Firefox surpass Microsoft's efforts by miles. The same could be said about Apple's Snow Leopard, where QuickTime is easily surpassed by VLC Media Player's extensive file format support.

This leads onto my question; should open source software come pre-installed? Mozilla's Firefox has hugely dented Internet Explorer's market share. Why is this? It is undoubtedly due to many aspects: it has a cleaner Graphical User Interface, is faster, has useful plug-ins, is highly personaliseable, is secure, and most importantly complies to web standards. Mozilla's Firefox scores 96/100 in the Acid3 test, Microsoft's forthcoming Internet Explorer 9 scores a miserable 32/100. A prime example of how open source can be better than large corporation efforts.

Microsoft come under pressure last year to not include Internet Explorer within Windows 7. The European Commission deemed the inclusion of Internet Explorer as anti-competitive browser behaviour. They wanted users to have the ability to choose their own preferred browser, rather than have Microsoft's efforts forced upon them. This was later ruled out however, and Windows 7 shipped in Europe with Internet Explorer 8 pre-installed as originally planned.

There are hundreds of open source programs that are better than huge corporation efforts. As mentioned previously, Mozilla Firefox is the internet browser of choice, Mozilla Thunderbird for email and VLC Media Player for entertainment (I am yet to come across a file it won't play). There are numerous others, but it would take a significant amount of time to list them all. The quote below summarises open source software perfectly.

"The availability of the source code and the right to modify it is very important. It enables the unlimited tuning and improvement of a software product. It also makes it possible to port the code to new hardware, to adapt it to changing conditions and to reach a detailed understanding of how the system works. This is why many experts are reaching the conclusion that to really extend the lifetime of an application, it must be available in source form. In fact, no binary-only application more than 10 years old now survives in unmodified form, while several open source software systems from the 1980's are still in widespread use (although in many cases conveniently adapted to new environments). Source code availability also makes it much easier to isolate bugs, and (for a programmer) to fix them."
Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona (Advantages of Open Source Software - Published 2000)

I don't see Microsoft or Apple bundling open source software that rivals their own creations anytime soon. For the moment it remains the user who has to download all their preferred programs. However, could manufacturers of PC's soon place open source software on thier machines, similarly to the free Anti-Virus trials many offer at the moment? It seems more likely to happen with Microsoft PC's than with Apple computers, due to the fact Apple build both the hardware and software of every Mac!