What is Open Source?
The traditional approach to IT is that you:
- buy the hardware
- buy the software
- install and host the hardware and software yourself
- buy a license every time you want to install the software on a new computer
So if you have ten computers, you buy ten software licenses.
Open Source software is an example of how great people can be. With most Free Open Source Software (also known as FOSS or FLOSS), communities of computer programmers around the world work together to provide software that is:
- free to acquire
- free to use
- free to be changed according to your want or need
- free to distribute
The idea of free, community created software has been around since the 1950s and has been called Open Source since 1998. The results of these community efforts are fantastic. In all traditional areas of commercial software, there are Open Source alternatives. This means that in many cases, software that people pay for can be replaced with a free alternative.
Open Source Benefits
- Freely available - software cab usually be downloaded for free
- Zero licence costs - no need to pay every time the software is installed
- Free upgrades - new versions are usually available for free
- Enterprise software - high-quality software such as ERP, CMS, CRM...
- High quality - global communities making improvements
- Source code included - useful if you want to enhance the software
- Flexibility - ability to change between software, platforms, and suppliers
Varieties of Open Source Software Available
Lots... To give you a flavour, these are some of the categories of Open Source Software that are available:
- Operating systems - Many look/feel much like Windows, but have the advantages high reliability and being free.
- Email and web browser software - Excellent alternative to products such as Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes.
- Enterprise applications - Software such as ERP for Finance/HR functions.
- Web and content management systems - Document management, collaboration, wiki, Intranet and Portal...
- Office productivity software - Word, spreadsheet, graphics, presentation and project management...
- Serverware - Web application servers, mail/file servers, database...
- Software development - Programming tools, development environments/applications and version control...
Who's using it?
- Nearly all of us and we don't even realise it!
- Nearly 70% of web traffic is made possible by the web server, Apache.
- In the majority of cases, every time we use the web, we use Open Source!
- According to w3schools Firefox, as of December 2008, had 44% of the recorded usage share of web browsers.
- The MySQL database is the most commonly used database on the web.
- The list of businesses & organisations using Open Source is endless. Here's a few:
- NASA
- Amazon
- PayPal
- Thawte
- Yahoo!
- Morgan Stanley
- Birmingham City Council
- NHS
