Posted on 04/20/2009 9:13:09 PM PDT by JoeProBono
Open source can help the bottom line, writes Sean Dodson.
Richard Stallman once wrote that the point about free software is it is "free as in freedom, not free as in beer", meaning people should be at liberty to do as they pleased with software, rather than subscribe to its restrictive licences.
As the economic crisis takes hold, the stress may be on the second half of his aphorism. To the millions downloading free software in an economic crisis, the point is that it is free, as in free beer.
Since Stallman first made his rallying cry as the founder of the free software movement in the 1980s, the way that software has been developed and distributed has been transformed. There cannot be a corner of the industrialised world that does not rely on some form of free software.
But such software, and the open source movement it inspired, has so far affected mostly the back-end world of servers and databases, or taken over from software, such as the web browser, that was already available at no cost.
Remaining largely untouched are the paid-for applications we run on our computers - the operating systems and desktop applications licensed from giants such as Microsoft, Adobe and Apple. But with money becoming increasingly scarce, and the free alternatives growing in sophistication, free is finally threatening to go mainstream.
Take OpenOffice, the leading alternative to a paid-for software application. As the downturn started, its download figures began to rocket. According to Oregon State University, since it launched its third version in mid-October, OpenOffice has been downloaded more than 42 million times. That's roughly four times every second, 13,500 times every hour or 324,000 every day, that someone, somewhere in the world has chosen to download free software, rather than pay for a software application.
"We chose it because of cost," says Chris Waite, the IT director of Travel Republic, a large online travel agent based in England. Listed as the fastest-growing private company in 2007, Travel Republic installed OpenOffice through necessity. It now runs it on all 120 desktops.
"The cost of the Microsoft Office suite is prohibitive, so we chose OpenOffice and it does everything we need," Mr Waite says. "It's saved us about 18,000 ($A38,000). I just wish we'd deployed more open source software from the outset."
Think of any paid-for application and there is now a serious free or open source alternative, each growing in sophistication and putting pressure on the proprietary market leader. Everything from image processing (Gimp), vector graphics (Inkscape) and audio recording (Audacity) to email clients (Thunderbird) - the list goes on. Although none of these applications is yet a market leader, free software has already had one effect on paid-for applications. "The overall price of software has been downwards for several years," says Bianca Granetto, a software analyst for Gartner......
Yeah, I’ve got a good number of them, the open source kind, for the Macintosh. And I guess there are a whole bunch of UNIX ones, too, but I’m not too much into those...
But, I’ve also got a “free” Microsoft Office, too... :-)
[... but I barely ever use it, maybe once or twice a year, so I’ll be darned if I’m gonna pay them... LOL...]
The first thing I did was to uninstall the teaser version of MS Office and install Open office on this machine. Then I went to www.filehippo.com and downloaded tons of other free open source software and utilities. It is fast and secure.
Becareful free software can be like free sex which you can end up with the clap.
Agreed. OpenOffice sometimes is flaky when it comes to user-friendly tools in the ‘actual’ Office. Used (or forced) by our boss to use it after the cheap company I worked for part-time started implementing it. One of our newbies then said he has a ‘copy” of Office (code for illegal download) and been using it since.
Now GIMP...love it. It’s used by tweeners to create their own banners and avatars, especially in the anime-manga world and I occasionally fansub so I use it as well. The learning process is less than Photoshop CS3 if you have the discipline.
The extent of free and open source code is the main thing that keeps me using Windows. I’ve found some incredibly useful utilities and apps - all freeware
Blender!
Becareful free software can be like free sex which you can end up with the clap.
I have been running Office 97 since that version chugged to a halt with my second computer. It does everything I need, and is much cheaper than the newest version.
It also has the advantage of being thorouchly tested in the marketplace, and aside from that annoying paper clip thingy, does what I need without problems.
If you want the latest, with all the whistles and bells, it usually costs more.
I haven't checked out Open Office yet, but will get it for the next computer and 'play' with it.
True. I tried the latest version of OO, 3 point something and while it is good, I still rate it at about 90% the quality of Office (which I think has been in decline since Office 97). There were several things missing in Writer and Calc that I use almost daily in Word and Excel. Try searching for tabs in Writer, for instance. I've been doing that since Word for Dogs, I think. Certainly far back into the Windows days.
Now it could be that I'm just wierd, and OO is fine for what 98% of people use Word and Excel for, but for my tasks, it ain't there yet. Oh, yeah, I also hate how the recently edited file list is common between all the OO apps.
As opposed to paid sex? I do agree however, that Microsoft sometimes acts like a bunch of whores.
That being said, Office 97-2000 was probably the best Office Suite. If Apple would fix a few things in iWork, it would be great, and only costs $79.
I’m not impressed with Office 2003 either. I’ve been reverting everything to 97, which is much better than 2003. Never tried 2000 or 2007 though.
Iirc, I paid $75 for it because it was not the latest version.
I did not upgrade to the others because few of my clients were in a hurry to run out and buy the latest stuff, and none complained of compatibility problems.
If it isn't broken, don't fix it (oil patch maxim).
My comparison was that sometime when you play in the streets or go where your not suppose to go you get in trouble. I am not saying that freeware is bad but some who give stuff away free have an different motive for giving it away. Back in my younger days it was not uncommon for me to get pirated software because damn Bill was just charging to damn much. I found out quickly that some of these folks planted virus and horses and other things in their free stuff.
It can be done, though it may not be as simple, or intuitive, as people would like.
To find a tab in Writer, search for "\x0009" without the quotes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.