Open source on Windows - a gentle introduction to freedom
What is open source
exactly? It's software that is free for most uses, which can be
distributed freely, and which can be studied or modified by anyone.
Most open source is free for personal and small business use.
If you want tech support or custom configuration,
Bottom Line Computer can do this for you at affordable rates.
Is it shareware? Not exactly. Because the source code is freely
available, it's much more trustworthy than shareware. Thousands of programmers
across the world have checked it for bugs.
Is it high quality? The major open source products are very high quality,
comparable with expensive commercial software.
Is it just for programmers? No. It's especially useful if you're a
programmer, because if you don't like how it works, you can change it to work the
way you want to. But even if you're not a programmer, you can still benefit from
the high quality of open source software.
Is it hard to use? On the average, no harder than commercial software
of comparable quality.
Can I get support? Yes. There are many options. You can hire a support
company, such as Bottom Line Computer, to give you tech support. Or in most cases,
you can buy a support license from the distributor of the software.
Is it compatible? Open source software is far more likely to be compatible
with open standards for file formats and network protocols than commercial
software will be. Commercial vendors use proprietary formats and protocols
to try to force you to keep using their software, and paying their license fees, once
you've started using it. This is called vendor lock in and it's one reason
commercial software licenses are so expensive. It gives the vendor a local monopoly
over your computer. Your data is held hostage. Open source frees you from that.
Also, many open source products work with "industry standard" proprietary formats
such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and with protocols such as Microsoft file sharing (SMB/CIFS).
Do you have to commit to a new operating system? No, you don't. You can
run whatever version of Windows you like, and open source software will run on it.
In fact, it will probably run better. Open source software is often much more
efficient than commercial software, and uses less resources. Switching to open source
can save you the expense of upgrading your old computer.
Some open source software that runs on Windows...
AbiWord - a word processor that reads and
writes Word documents.
OpenOffice - a free, open source substitute
for Microsoft Word. Supports Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats. Uses less system
resources than Microsoft Office.
Mozilla - a Web browser with better security
than Internet Explorer, built-in pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing.
Blender - a 3D modeling and animation program.
Used to be commercial software.
MySQL - a relational database engine suitable
for medium-sized projects.
Apache - the predominant Web server on
the Internet.
Where does open source come from? In the early days, open source software
was written by programmers who were dissatisfied with the commercial software
that was available, so they decided to write their own.
Having done so, they decided to make their work freely available so that others
could enjoy the benefits of their work.
Most often, these programmers worked in university computer science departments,
and had the funds and the free time to create great software such as the
BSD suite of Internet software, which is the
basis for almost all of the Internet today. Even Microsoft has used BSD code
in their operating systems. More recently, large corporations such as IBM have
become involved in open source, on the theory that if the software is freely
available and of high quality, then that will help sell more computers.
