Web Solutions » Open Source Solution

Open source software can be obtained by businesses for little or no cost. Developed and supported globally by IT professionals it provides an alternative to more traditional forms of proprietary software. Open source software is available for most business needs, including content management systems, databases, office tools, operating systems, internet related applications and IT security. Open source software solutions began as a marketing campaign for free software. Open source software can be defined as computer software for which the human-readable source code is made available under a copyright license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that meets the Open Source Definition. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form.
Whatever applications your business needs - whether it is a word processing solution, accounting software, customer relationship management software or website applications - you'll find it easy to find an open source version. Some popular open source software options include:

Operating Systems

• GNU/Linux (various versions or distributions
  include Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu and Red
  Hat) - operating system
• OpenSolaris - operating system
• FreeBSD - operating system
• Android - mobile phone platform

Internet-Related Applications

• Juice - podcasting
• Mozilla Firefox - web browser
• Mozilla Thunderbird - email client
• Pidgin - instant messaging
• Zimbra - email and collaboration server
• Apache - web server
• Zope - web application server
• PHP - web application platform
• Wordpress - blog hosting platform
• MediaWiki - information sharing platform

Office Software

• Abiword - word processing tool
• Alfresco - enterprise content management system
• Joomla - enterprise content management system
• Open Office.org - business productivity suite
• Drupal - enterprise content management system
• Chandler - contact management and collaboration
• SugarCRM - customer relationship management
• vTiger - customer relationship management
• MySQL - database
• Ingres - database

IT Security

• Smoothwall - firewall and security tools
• Wireshark (aka Ethereal) - security application
• KeePass - password management
• Clam AV - antivirus software

Images Multi-Media

• GIMP - image processing/graphics editing
• VLC - multimedia file playback
• Ogg - open video and audio codecs

Development Tools

• Ruby on Rails - rapid web application development
• Eclipse - integrated development environment