The Benefits of Open Source Software
Written by Author on November 29th, 2009As incredible as it appears, there are hundreds of businesses and foundations out there that actively build and distribute software for free. The reason for them doing this depends on company to company, but the benefits to the users is huge.
Many years ago in the 70′s, computer geeks and nerds would develop software and give it to other hobbyists for free to try and make it better. Then along came a man called Bill Gates who saw a entrepreneurial opportunity in building software for computers and constructed Altair BASIC. Unfortunately for him, his software 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).
In the past few years, the open source collective has been gaining a big foothold in the software market, probably driven by developing countries who can’t afford the licensing fees of commercial software like Windows, Word, Photoshop and even Programming Languages.
There are free versions of probably everything, from e-commerce solutions to images. The open source concept has even hit the food and drink market with open source recipes for wine and beer now free on the World Wide Web. I am actually writing this informative article on a piece of open source software called Open Office, a free alternative to MS Word, and it’s powered by Ubuntu, a free alternative to Windows or Mac OS X.
When it comes to websites, there is a plethora of open source software available to power any kind of site. Web development companies such as WordPress and Wikimedia Foundation release scripts free for anyone to use. What makes it incredibly effective is that open source customization can be done by a huge number of companies around the world.
Choosing open source software to run your website provides a fantastic base from which to commence, eg WordPress is fantastic for virtually any sort of site, but with a bit of WordPress customization you can have it meet your exact specifications for half of the price of coding it from the beginning.
Before you purchase your next script, always research to discover if there is an open source option available. Especially during these economic conditions, open source products could be one way you or your organization can lower its costs.