A Short Open Source Software Primer

Background:
All computers are more than the sum of their parts. Whatever physical
hardware is purchased from a vendor (HP, IBM, Dell etc) it is useless
without software. Software can be divided into 2 groups, Operating
Systems (Windows XP, GNU/Linux) and Applications (Microsoft Internet
Explorer, Firefox). All software is made by generating instructions for
the computer in the form of "source code"

Proprietary Vs Free Software
Whenever software is obtained it comes with a licence.
Most software licences are designed to limit what you can do with the
software, examples of this can be seen when Windows or Microsoft Office
is installed. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) comes with a licence
that permits far greater freedom to the user.

The primary benefit is that once obtained almost all FOSS products can
be freely copied to other machines.

The other big benefit is access to the source code. To business, this
means that technical staff can audit the source and fix problems
quickly, to educational bodies it also provides a means to teach
students about real world software writing practices. Proprietary
software such as Windows, is not available for public scrutiny.

The Cost of Free
The term "Free" is used to denote the rights one has with the software.
FOSS licences generally do not forbid the sale of the software, only
require that the source is provided.

Many in industry fear that "Free" software has no company backing or
supporting the products.  Not so.  Hewlett Packard, IBM and Apple all
use, sell and support FOSS products.

Licencing costs can however be dramatically reduced. Without the need to
purchase permission to use the software on each computer, IT departments
in industry, the NHS, education and government can save thousands of
pounds.

All computers need support.  FOSS does not negate the need for trained,
competent staff.  Initial cross-training may be expensive, but it can
have cost saving benefits further down the line.

Benefits in Education
By using FOSS in education, we could return to teaching the concepts of
any computing task. Rather than slavishly learning one company's
products by rote. In the long term this would make the workforce more IT
literate.

Independence
The final point to make is that FOSS gives you independence from the
constant pay for upgrade cycle foisted upon us by large software
companies.  If a proprietary software company ceases support of a
product that you rely on then you are left with obsolete data and the
need to migrate.  With FOSS, if the vendor loses interest in a product,
the original source is still available and should the user  (or a group
of users) wish to continue with it, they can.

In the long term, if the cost per installation for computers is reduced
and we have a more IT literate workforce, we should be able to better
compete against the cheap "off-shoring" market, the money saved on
installations being used to provide local support staff.

Success stories and further information can be found at:
http://www.opensourceacademy.gov.uk/

Example FOSS Operating systems:
Ubuntu Linux (from Canonical Ltd)
Red Hat Linux
Apple Darwin (The basis for Apple's OSX)

Example FOSS Applications:
Apache (The program that enables most of the WWW)
Firefox (Web Browser)
MySQL (database applications)
Open Office (Word Processor, spreadsheet and Presentations)
Thunderbird (Email reader)