The Benefits of Open Source Software
As fantastic as it sounds, there are businesses and foundations out there that actively build and syndicate software for free. The reason for them doing this depends on company to company, but the benefits to the customers is huge.
A long time back in the 1970′s, computer geeks and nerds would programme software and syndicate it to others for free to try and improve it. Then along came a man called Bill Gates who saw a money making opportunity in programming software for computers and designed Altair BASIC. Unfortunately for him, his product was also given away around and he ended up writing a pointed letter describing why software should not be free (Google Bill Gates Open Letter).
Recently, the open source collective has been winning a significant slice in the software market, probably caused by developing countries who can’t afford the licensing fees of commercial software like Windows, Excel, Dreamweaver and even Programming Languages.
There are free versions of probably everything, from blogging platforms to images. The open source concept has even hit the food and drink market with open source recipes for wine and beer now available on the Web. I am actually writing this short article on a piece of open source software called Open Office, a free substitute to MS Word, and it’s running on Ubuntu, a free substitute to Windows or Mac OS X.
When it comes to the Internet, there is a wide range of free available to power any kind of site. Web development companies such as WordPress and Wikimedia Foundation release products free for organizations to use. What makes it extremely attractive is that open source customization can be undertaken by a huge number of companies around the globe.
Utilizing open source software for your website sets up a awesome base from which to commence, eg WordPress is fantastic for probably any sort of site, but with a bit of WordPress customization you can have it meet your exact requirements for a small percentage of the price of creating it from nothing.
Before you buy your next script, always look to find out if there is an open source option available. Particularly during these hard times, open source scripts could be one way you or your business can reduce its costs.
This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 4:38 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.