Open Source Software
Posted on June 29, 2004
Filed Under Open Source/Freeware, Software |
Anyone who has purchased one of the latest and greatest productivity or graphics software suites can readily attest – it isn’t cheap. Software can range from a few dollars to many tens of thousands of dollars depending on the manufacturer and demand for the product. And sadly, a computer is little more than desktop clutter without useful software.
Traditionally many Internet resources were offered to the online community free of charge. Of course one would still need to pay an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to connect to the Internet in the first place, but once connected users were able to access a wealth of resources without paying another cent.
The World Wide Web has changed that in many ways and today there are advertisements, on line shopping, and a multitude of ways for a person to easily part with his or her money. According to http://ecommerce.internet.com “U.S. online retail sales are expected to reach $65 billion in 2004, and will continue to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 17 percent through 2008 to top $117 billion.” Fortunately the spirit of community still lives on in many corners of the Internet. One of the most interesting and useful offerings is free, or sometimes referred to as “open source” software.
The idea of open source is that the author or authors make the actual source code or the original written building blocks of the program available for distribution without charge. Many open source programs allow you to modify the source code to suit your needs but for the average user there is also a version of the program available that can be installed and used as is.
There is also a multitude of software available that does not include the source code but otherwise is free for use. Whether open source or simply free, there are usually some terms as to who can use the software and for what reason. It is always wise to read the license agreement before installing the software.
If you’re like most people the thought of “free” almost unconsciously translates to “inferior” or “mediocre”. In some cases there are drawbacks such as lack of support or the risk of the project being abandoned but one need only consider some of the most widely used free or open source software for a bit of reassurance.
Many of the world’s most powerful internet servers run on OpenBSD, FreeBSD, or one of the many versions of Linux available – all of them free of charge. On top of that, one of the “killer” applications on the Internet is the World Wide Web. Many World Wide Web servers run the free and extremely powerful Apache web server along with MySQL, a prevailing and again free database server.
But the list doesn’t end at highly technical server products that only people with little better to do (ahem) would even think about. There is a wealth of free and open source products available ranging from word processors to spreadsheet programs to graphics and computer aided design suites. Many of these programs are as robust and fully featured as their commercial counterparts. For a small taste of what is available, try a Google (http://www.google.com) search for “open source” or “freeware”.
Of course there are many reasons why it may be in your better interest to purchase commercial software. As we touched on previously, support alone may be a deciding factor or you may need to be guaranteed that your software will be compatible with someone else’s. There are a large number of commercial software vendors out there and they stay in business generally because they produce quality products.
If you are a bit more adventurous or on a limited budget however, open source or free software may just be what the doctor ordered.
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