Open Source Software

There has been an outcry over the past years that commercial software is nothing more than bloated and memory hogging. It is further said by many that too few control too many when it comes to what software we use and how we use our computers. Enter Open Source, Freeware and Shareware. As the majority of businesses and home computer users are running Microsoft Windows, this article will focused on open source projects that will run on this platform. This is not to discount the many open source operating systems available such as Linux, its just that many are not ready to learn a new operating system and are looking for alternatives to commercial high cost applications.

Open Source products are not necessarily free from cost, the free refers to the source code being open for others to use and incorporate. The aspect that of course appeals to this author is the ease that others may contribute to a particular project thereby customizing and hopefully making it a better product. I know this is not an easy concept for us here in America where it has been ingrained in us to develop a new product, don’t share it, and sell it to the highest bidder. In fact this is how Microsoft has built many of their products; buying out small software projects and putting their name on them. For instance did you realize that Frontpage was originally developed by a company called Vermeer?

But before we get further into some of the individual open source projects I want to touch on some issues of security. It should be no surprise to anyone that Microsoft is not the most loved corporation on the planet. It should then follow that the majority of hackers and authors of viruses are going to target Mircosoft products. This for me was reason enough to give open source a closer look.

Following are some of the more mature open source projects that many may want to investigagte:

1.Mozilla: This project has been around for ever and have some of the best products available in my opinion. From Firefox2 (Internet Browser) to Thunderbird (Email) they offer very viable alternatives. All of their products are free to download and use and they are constantly upgrading and improving. The big advantage with these products is the developer following and availability of extensions that can be installed to extend the functionality of the applications. http://mozilla.org

2.Evolution (http://shellter.sourceforge.net/evolution/): This is a product that was originally written for Linux and if you use Microsoft Outlook you will feel right at home with this application. When I reviewed this product I was going to replace Outlook but opted for Thunderbird and a online calendar (http://Airset.com).

3.Nuv: This is a complete web development suite along the lines of Microsoft Frontpage and Macromedia Dreamweaver. The application will run on Windows, Linux and Macintosh. http://www.nvu.com

4.Open Office: This suite of applications has gone through numerous revisions and keeps getting better. This is a very viable replacement for Microsoft Office or other commercial office application, in fact many corporations are now using Open Office in the workplace. The real plus here is that included in this suite is the ability to create acrobat files. The only thing lacking is a Access type database. http://openoffice.org
These are only a few of the more popular projects out there. The OSSwin project http://osswin.sourceforge.net/ is a resource that posts a very comphrensive list of open source applications from DVD authoring to virus scanners and more. This is a great starting point for Windows Open Source Software. Finally, wouldn’t it be great if there was a open source version of Windows? The people at ReactOS http://www.reactos.org/en/ have been working on just that and creating a open source version of Windows XP.