Open-Source Software

AT THE END OF THIS POST, I AM GOING TO SHOW YOU WHERE TO GET FREE SOFTWARE, SO READ ON...

Technology is reshaping safety and has allowed staffing companies to give small businesses the big business advantage. But there is a cost, a big cost. Software makerskeeps coming with newer versions of their software (it seems) every year. Upgrades cost $300-$1500 per program/suite per user. Many companies have taken the approach to upgrade their systems every 2nd or 3rd release due to the cost.




There are many developing countries that cannot afford to purchase and upgrade software. The answer isopen-source software. We will explore open-source software in this post.



REAL LIFE SCENARIO:



You safety manager at the New Jersey (headquarters) plant, you are told that the company is making cutbacks. They are closing the California plant, letting go the safety managers at the Ohio plant, the other New Jersey plant, and the Pennsylvania distribution center. You will now oversee safety at all the facilities. The facility managers will handle the day-to-day safety, you will visit each facility once a year or as needed.



The company has given you space on their web site for you to post (distribute) all safety information (which saves on printing costs). The web master/IT person/whoever will upload the content that you provide.



Over the years, you have advanced with your photography hobby. Having learned darkroom chemical film processing, you took classes to keep up with technology as photography went digital. You know more than most, you can use photoshop. You even took a class in HTML (web sites) because that is how many photographers display their work.



A company that just let go 4 safety managers and closed a plant down is not going to spend $1200 on software that you need but they do not understand.



What to do???

The Answer:

It just may be open-source software. But what is open-source software, and is it the same as free software?

is computer software with its source code made available and licensed with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.Open-source software is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner.



What is the difference between open source and free software? Open source software is provided at no cost by the copyright holder under an open-source licence which permits the user to use, modify and distribute the software. Free software is provided at no cost by a commercial software or hardware producer--these are often a driver for hardware or a reduced function version of commercial software.



HOW DID OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE GET STARTED?



From the early 1960s to the early 1980s, revenues in computer business were generated through selling and supporting hardware. For every hardware device, a special operating system was developed and deployed. The users of these systems were highly Specialized IT experts. They were the ones primarily responsible for the development of additional software.



Many efforts were dedicated to build an operating system that could be deployed on multiple hardware platforms. The most prominent example was Unix, which was developed at the AT&T laboratories and was published in1969. Commercial users had to pay high license fees for using Unix, whereas academic institutions could use the software for a nominal charge. Consequently, Unix was the basis for the development of the Internet technologies.



Many of these technologies were developed at universities and computer companies research laboratories, where Unix was deployed. Sharing thesource code among software developers was commonplace. This tendency was reinforced by the emergence of computer networks like the Usenet that was started in 1979 to link the Unix community.



A critical event in the early1980s for cooperative software development was the turn-around in ATdo you really think they will settle for free software? They should, free software can be powerful.



The biggest reason: FEAR OF CHANGE. For companies, the enterprise solutions are convenient because they've been purchased and they're already here. Why bother with the effort of switching? However, most companies know that learning is a significant component of their software infrastructure, and employees will have to (eventually) learn new software and adapt to changes and updates anyway.



SO LET US CONSIDER WHY OPEN SOURSE IS GOOD:



SECURITY



The recent discovery Android kernel. It was possible is that the kernel code is open to public view. Android may not be fully open source, but this example is still a perfect illustration of what's known as "Linus' Law," named for Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux.



According to that maxim, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." What that means is that the more people who can see and test a set of code, the more likely any flaws will be caught and fixed quickly. (It's essentially the polar opposite of the "security through obscurity" argument used so often to justify the use of expensive proprietary products.)



Does the absence of such flaw reports about the code of the iPhone or Windows mean that such products are more secure? Far from it--quite the opposite, you might even say. All it means is that those products are closed from public view, so no one outside the companies that own them has the faintest clue how many bugs they contain. There's no way the limited set of developers and testers within those companies can test their products as well as the worldwide community can.



QUALITY



Which is more likely to be better: a software package created by a handful of developers, or a software package created by thousands of developers? Just as there are countless developers and users working to improve the security of open source software, so are there just as many innovating new features and enhancements to those products.

In general, open source software gets closest to what users want because those users can have a hand in making it so. It's not a matter of the vendor giving users what it thinks they want--users and developers make what they want, and they make it well.



CUSTOMIZABILITY



Along similar lines, business users can take a piece of open source software and tweak it to suit their needs. Since the code is open, it's simply a matter of modifying it to add the functionality they want. Don't try that with proprietary software!



HARDWARE



When your business uses proprietary software such MS Windows and MS Office, you are on a treadmill that requires you to keep upgrading both software and hardware ad infinitum. Open source software, on the other hand, is typically much less resource-intensive, meaning that you can run it well even on older hardware. It's up to you--not some vendor--to decide when it's time to upgrade.



Open source software is much better at adhering to open standards than proprietary software is. If you value interoperability with other businesses, computers and users, and don't want to be limited by proprietary data formats, open source software is definitely the way to go.



THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT:



The British Government has, for the first time, mandated a preference for using open source software for future developments.



The new , released as a beta version on 14 March and effective from April, lays out the standards that must be used for all new digital public services developed across the UK.



In a , the manual says: "Use open source software in preference to proprietary or closed source alternatives, in particular for operating systems, networking software, web servers, databases and programming languages."



NOW THE FREE STUFF:



The British Government hason the government website.



In this toolkit, is the document (which can be downloaded ). This document presents suggestions for open source software to be considered for new IT solutions to meet business requirements, or as replacements for existing closed proprietary software.



Thank you for reading.
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