Open Source Daily Journal

Open Source Software or OSS which refers to software that source codes are distributed with no charge or limitations on modification has spawned a significant amount of interest for the past years. It sells this approach as a business model that emphasizes quicker growth and lower overhead as well as a closer customer relationship and exposure to wider market. The concept of Open Source is based on the philosophy of free software wherein it advocates freely available source code as a fundamental right with an inclination of course to a more commercial approach including a business model and development tactic. Encompassing development methodology, this software can be incrementally enhanced and more easily tested that result to a highly dependable product.

MIT soon collaborated with Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Carnegie-Mellon University. They all thrived to develop software that is able to communicate with each other with the use of the ARPAnet. ARPAnet, built by the Defense Department in 1960 is the first transcontinental high speed data network. It was formerly intended as an experiment in digital communication until is rapidly grew to link hundreds of universities, research laboratories and defense contractors. With this, it allowed free exchange of information along with exceptional speed and flexibility. Programmers then began to dynamically contribute to different shared projects. And all these led to casual principles and guidelines for dispersed software development rooting from the Hacker Ethic.

That is a very difficult question to ask for big businesses who normally have complex customized programs that allows them to function as a business. But the economic conditions have been forcing a lot of thought into the technology, considering both the advantages and disadvantages of the many successful open source projects that have already been out on the market. To ask that question would result in varying answers depending on who you ask, for large companies that use large programs and technology would not be so keen on adopting such a public technology. This does not however mean that they are not considering them for even some of the staunchest developers of closed systems have been trying out some of these technologies on a limited basis, proving the benefits, which is mainly cost are enticing enough for them to take notice. Continue Reading »

More and more businesses are considering the benefits in terms of cost in re-deploying their previously closed programs onto open systems that can be quite prone to hacking. Security has been on the agenda and is one of the major focus of developers and technology experts who have been promoting the new and improved open-system designs. Securing a very large distributed system that uses open technology is a very large task but developers are getting there, finally agreeing on how best to approach the security of the many projects being deployed or are already in place. Continue Reading »

The methods at which businesses and communities are trying to reach out and garner members vary depending on the technology they are promoting. Imagine FireFox that has been a long time in the making, a product of the Mozilla Foundation that came up with a web browser that was not only faster but much better than the long standing leader of the pack, Internet Explorer. They considered the changing web and how people are using the web, designed a framework, published the designs and asked for comments, suggestions and just about anything you might want to say to improve on the proposed browser. Get back down and incorporate the best suggestions in terms of improvement and release the browser into the wild that is the internet, viola, success in the making. Continue Reading »

Ubuntu has long been in the background of more prominent open-source projects that has been silently creeping, making a name for itself. It is after all based on Linux that itself is based from of course Unix, one of the oldest languages that has ruled the realm of mini to mainframe computers in the infancy of the internet. One of the best benefits of Linux and other derivatives or flavors as they are called is the ability to strip unwanted parts of the base operating system leaving only the needed ones intact. This allows an old Pentium computer to become and FTP server making for a cheap and deployable form of technology in an old package. Continue Reading »

Firefox is hailed to be the best and most used browser to date which has taken over the much infamous Internet explorer from Microsoft. Why, the problems the software giant has with issues ranging from unfair commercial acts to plain ignorance of their user’s needs in terms of customization. The Fox is truly killing IE for millions now prefer to use it because they can totally customize their installation, with plug-ins that come from the users themselves who contribute to it’s improvement. Continue Reading »

Symbian users will be in for a nice treat next year as the said smartphone operating system have plans of going opensource.

The momentum to turn Symbian into an open source mobile operating system is strong, and developers can expect to see a preliminary version in the first half of 2009, said Lee Williams, nominated executive director of the Symbian Foundation.

In June, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) announced plans to purchase the remaining stock in Symbian and spin it into a royalty-free operating system under the Eclipse Public License. The goal was to harness the innovation of the open source environment to increase market share, as well as to attract application developers.

Go opensource!

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The common thing in both the Free Software and Open Source communities’ approaches is the open availability of the source code to developers. Free Software Community provides source codes to developers with the goal of which, that the user is free to do what he wishes with the software’s source code. It is more philosophical in nature. While, Open Source Community believes in providing these source codes to users, with the aim that collaborative efforts can bring productive results. It motivates the users to freely provide their suggestions for the source code and can append it to the existing one. For some years, the communities were working with the same concept and “Open Source” came to be used as a marketing term for free software to reduce the ambiguity, but somehow, it contributed to more problems. So the two communities parted and started their own way. So now you know, “Open Source” is really opposite to the original context of “Free Software”.

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Content management system (CMS) is not new. Yet, not many business owners are aware of how the technology can help to bring their business to the next level.

A website owner greatly relies on their web designers to manage their website, which is time consuming and costly.
Here are some various CMS solutions that may be suitable for you:

1) Joomla – One of the most popular and commonly used CMS today, the software is released under GNU General public license, so anybody can use the software and make modifications to give for their own use.

2) Drupal – Drupal is a solid, high quality platform that is claimed to be user friendly and well liked by web developers. Only 1 installation is needed for multi sites.

3) CMS made simple – A much simpler key that is quick to learn and easy to use. This software is very good for small websites with few pages. Business owners that are new to the online world will find this software fitting.