Open Source
From Consultancy.EdVoncken.NET
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My first encounter with Open Source was way back in 1993, installing Slackware Linux (kernel 0.99pl13) from a stack of floppies downloaded at the TU/e. I've been running Linux ever since, and based my professional career on Open Source: I am currently a Red Hat Certified Engineer, aiming for RHCA on the long term.
[edit] What is Open Source?
Open Source is a way of developing software where the source code is freely shared with others. This way, innovation can happen at a much faster pace. Open Source software licenses are focused on granting rights for users and developers, rather than imposing restrictions.
Organizations like the Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman's GNU Project have been instrumental in the rise of Open Source software.
Commercial companies like Red Hat offer support for Open Source, usually in the form of paid subscriptions - the actual software source code is made freely availably. In other words, they provide 'Enterprise-Ready Open Source'.
[edit] History of Open Source
Open Source has been around for decades - it gained widespread popularity when Linux became available as a Free and Open Source version of Unix for your standard PC. Finally, you could run a Unix-like operating system on commodity hardware!
The Open Source community initially concentrated on creating an Operating System with all necessary tools for software engineers (for example, the excellent GNU Compiler Collection). As time progressed, more and more applications became available. Today, you can run your entire business on Free and Open Source software.
When migrating legacy environments to Open Source, the following link may be useful:
[edit] Open Source in Business
Open Source has become pervasive; there is almost always an Open Source alternative for your business application software. For example:
- OrangeHRM - Human Resource Management software
- SugarCRM - Customer Relationship Management software
- Salesforce.com - Customer Relationship Management as a Service
- OpenOffice.org - a complete Office suite including wordprocessor, spreadsheet, presentation and database
- Firefox - a very popular web-browser, available for many operating systems
- MySQL and PostgreSQL - enterprise-grade database servers