Open Source. Not Micro, not Soft.

I don’t think many people know a lot about open source software and the drive behind it. Open source is a broad concept. Basically, it means that if software is labelled as “Open Source”, its source code is made available with the software, allowing anyone with programming skills to modify, improve and redistribute the software again. It does not necessarily mean that it is free, but in most cases it is so. There is a whole drive behind Open Source (see this website ) and even our own internet guru Mark Shuttleworth joined in this drive with the OpenCD project. They distributed cd’s with (free) Open Source software (OSS) on it. Check out the OpenCd link for more info. He is also the founder of the Ubuntu operating system. Ubuntu is based on Linux, an alternative operating system software to Microsoft Windows, for instance.

OSS includes software equivalents for all the well-known software out there. Let me give you a couple of examples. For an OSS equivalent of Microsoft Office, try Open Office. It can read MS Office files such as .doc, .xls, etc, and you can also save documents in the Microsoft formats. And its completely free. Then as a very impressive alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), you have the already well-known Mozilla Firefox. This is simply brilliant. They’ve gone places where IE still haven’t dreamt of (I’ll write more on this in a later post – it deserves its own post). And it’s free. Many of you out there, still use Outlook Express. Forget about it. Firefox has a sister and she’s available. Her name is Thunderbird. Once you have tried it instead of Outlook Express, you’ll never look back. Normally Content Management Software (CMS) and intranet software is helluva expensive. Enter Plone. It is the most comprehensive CMS I’ve ever seen. It has add-ons questionnaires, forums, document management, etc. And it’s free. How much did your dad pay those days for an encyclopedia? Visit Wikipedia (Also try Fact Bites) online. All done with free software. There is software for science, web design, games, audio, hobbies, databases, etc. All Free! There’s too many to mention here. I’ll leave you with this last link. It’s a link of some of the favourite free software for Windows. Also try Sourceforge, although that site is not easy to use. Remember there is also Google. You can always find open source software by typing in the type of software you are looking for, followed by the word “open source”.

Go forth and may the “source” be with you!