Open Source- The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.
December 5, 2008
Whether your just discovering Open Source or your a veteran, you will or have come across some of the gotcha’s, quirks and Wow can this stuff really be FREE experiences. It can be a roller coaster ride of sorts. If you know how to navigate and tread the enormous landscape of Open Source projects then you will have more of the latter experiences; Wow can this stuff all be free!
Open Source is still one of those untapped treasures of mankind (sounds weird saying that). We have been hard coded to think of technology one way and here comes Open Source and it goes against all the grains in our post modern capitalistic society. It says I want to be Free for the good of mankind, I want people to have access as well as options. It says, I will unite the world (developers & enthusiasts) and fight the good fight against big business. I guess me being a user of open source software makes me a soldier in the army of …., maybe not, but you get my point. The simple fact is that free software is slowly eroding the stronghold of proprietary software. On the other hand some old adages still ring true, sometimes you get what you pay for and sometimes if it sounds too good to be true, then maybe it is, in one way or the other. Here, we will discuss the amazing, the disappointing and the aggravating parts of Open Source. Like the Sergio Leone film, let us see which one wins the race when it comes to the future of the computing world.
The Good
- Freedom to view, change and redistribute the source code.
no one company can have a stronghold on it. - It is Free (Free as in air not as in beer).
- It makes technology affordable in an age where technology can be a great equalizer.
- You can build businesses around it (I love making money).
- It shines light on human nobility and shows that improving technology can also affect people on a social, economical and plain human level. There is hope for us after all.
- It is secure, when used wisely.
- Bugs are more quickly found and fixed. More pairs of eyes looking at the code.
- Server side of things can be found in the computer rooms of fortune 500 companies worldwide.
The Bad
- There are so many projects that we could get lost.
- Not always compatible with latest and greatest hardware
- Can have a higher learning curve than their proprietary counterparts.
- Lack of documentation
- User interfaces are not always as intuitive.
- Not yet mature on the desktop side of things
The Ugly
- Some applications can have a steep learning curve
- Projects can be abandoned, your left holding the bag unless you have a developer in your back pocket.
So there you have it a list of some of the good and bad stuff in Open Source out there.
Fell free to add your insight.
I will expand on these in a later post.
Open Source Technology, a must for your small Business and links to get you started.
September 5, 2008
Are you looking for innovative ways to increase your ROI, your bottom line and downright save a ton of money on your IT costs?
Are you looking for innovative ways to increase your ROI, your bottom line and downright save a ton of money on your IT costs? Let me answer that for you! Of course you are, you would not be a savvy business owner if you did not seek out ways to stretch your money. Drum roll please, introducing Open Source technology a new way for small businesses to even the playing field with their enterprise and big boy competitors.
Why is this important? You now have access to the same or comparable solutions that normally costs hundreds if not thousands to implement and deploy. Case in point, the Open Source version of SugarCRM, which is a Customer Relationship Management tool can be had for free while one of its proprietary and commercial competitors Salesforce.com cost about $1,000 to start per year for a five user license. Another quick example has Ubuntu, which is a full-featured Linux based operating system against Microsoft XP. XP Professional edition costs $299.99, while Ubuntu costs nothing and comes freely loaded with Office utilities that rival Microsoft’s Office software suite. You do the math. Remember to include per user and or per pc price and upgrades. Yeah, I know, you have been suckered for a long time and we didn’t even mention the server operating system and licenses. Ask yourself, why am I paying for something when I can get it done for little or no cost?
Using Open Source is like using “guerrilla tactics” for your small business IT needs. Does free mean cheap? Let’s take a look. Open Source software affords the user to have software developed by hundreds of developers instead of just a few. Most of the Open Source solutions mentioned here are tried and tested solutions. Did you know that you already use Open Source? Yep, in fact if you use a web browser or use email your using opens source software. The Internet is built upon open standards and runs on Open Source software. Who currently uses Open Source software? IBM, HP, Oracle, whole governments, Google, Yahoo and Amazon just to name a few.
So you might be asking yourself, what exactly is Open Source? Open Source software in its simplest form is software that freely distributes the source code along with the object code (the actual program that you install and use), so that any programmer familiar with the language can tweak, improve, modify or customize it without needing to ask anyone for permission or wait for a vendor to do it for them. For a more verbose definition, please visit www.opensource.org. The bottom line is, this model of software distribution can give you a freedom and a savings that compels you to at least become a bit more knowledgeable to its uses.
These are some useful links to help get you started on the Open Source road.
www.opensourceweekly.com (for the latest is Open Source technology for small business owners)
www.sourceforge.net (the world’s largest Open Source software development web site)
www.freshmeat.org (Open Source software repository site)
www.theopencd.org (a collection of high quality Free and Open Source Software.)
www.ttcsweb.org/osswin-cd/ (a collection of over 100 free/Open Source software for home and business.)
www.itservants.com (Open Source Technology Consultants)
Top Open Source Applications for your small business needs.
www.openoffice.org (Great alternate to the Microsoft office suite.)
www.firefox.com (Open Source web browser, great alternative to Internet Explorer)
www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird (Thunderbird email application, similar to Outlook)
www.tightvnc.com (for remote connection to your computers)
www.mysql.com (The worlds most popular Open Source database)
www.phpmyadmin.com (database management tool)
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net (Filezilla- ftp application to upload and download your web content)
www.joomla.org (Website Content Management System or CMS)
www.mamboserver.com (Website Content Management System or CMS)
www.apache.org (Very popular Web server application)
www.oscommerce.com (online shop/ e-commerce solution)
www.sugarcrm.com (the CRM tool mentioned in this article)
www.dotproject.net (project management web application)
www.gimp.org (Image manipulation program)
www.nvu.com (complete Web Authoring System)
www.gnucash.org (personal and small-business financial-accounting software.)
www.subversion.tigris.org (Subversion- Document management and revision control system)
www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php (WebCalendar- Online calendar program for single or multiple users)
www.openvpn.net (full-featured SSL VPN solution)
Desktop Linux Distributions
www.ubuntu.com Ubuntu
www.redhat.com Redhat
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki Fedora
www.novell.com/linux Suse
http://en.opensuse.org OpenSuse
www.slackware.com Slackware
You can also get the server versions to take care of your business client/server needs such as Email, file, print, FTP, Web, Database, Domain, Authentication etc., There are many distributions of Linux available please check www.distrowatch.com for additional resources.
This list is not at all exhausting and not meant to be. This should serve as a starting place on your journey into the Open Source realm. For general questions feel free to emailThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it me, if you have specific questions about any software listed here try posting to the respective forums. A good book to read is Open Source Solutions for Small Business Problems, written by John Locke. My definition of Open Source was found in this book.
What have we learned? Before you plunder hundreds of your hard earned or borrowed money into software seek out or find someone who is versed in this technology. Research and evaluate if an Open Source solution can fit your needs. Remember, Open Source Saves!
Best Open Source Software for 2008
September 5, 2008
Best of open source in productivity applicationsAudacity, Sound Editing
See the winners of the Best Open Source Software awards for 2008
- Blender, 3D Modeling
- Firefox, Web Browser
- GIMP, Image Editing
- OpenOffice.org, Productivity Suite
-
PDFCreator, PDF Creation
InfoWorld Test Center’s editors, analysts and reviewers had chosen 60 products for the eight Bossies categories of the recently held Best of Open Source Awards 2008. The celebration of the best free software of today for business, IT staff and respective employee’s workstations marks another recognition of open-source’s continuous drive for improvement, stability and usability.
Among the easy picks for this year’s winners were OpenOffice.org for office productivity suite, Snort for network intrusion detection, and Splunk for security log analysis. Although, these applications were already believed to be solutions ahead of their competition, InfoWorld’s editors, analysts, reviewers really had a difficult time choosing between other solutions in all eight categories that included the following: enterprise applications such as CRM, ERP, BI, and reporting; collaborative applications, including mail/calendar, wiki, and social networking; desktop productivity apps from office suites to 3-D modeling; platforms and middleware, including operating systems, databases, virtualization, and SOA integration; developer tools from AJAX and rich Internet apps to Web service testing and version control; networking, including server monitoring, routing, Wi-Fi scanning, and VoIP software; security software, including firewall, IDS, disk encryption, and security testing; and storage which includes monitoring and administration, backup, and NAS.
InfoWorld admitted that the development of the products were remarkable and were evolving incredibly fast. Even with the repeat champions like Sugar, Alfresco and Asterisk which were winners of last year’s Bossie Awards, the products featured considerable flexibility to the new demands of development.
Three sun products won the awards in two different categories: My SQL as best database and the recently acquired VirtualBox as best desktop virtualization both under the Best of Open Source Platforms and Middle category and OpenOffice.org as best productivity suite under Best of Open Source Productivity Apps category.
InfoWorld editors noted MySQL’s outstanding read performance, transparent support for binary objects and large text, and amazingly easy administration as well as the helpful user-base that made it deserving for the award. VirtualBox on the other hand, won due to its operating system support and faultless windows support. Thanks to its pioneering capability to be available for both Linux and Windows, it stomped its other competitors futile. As for OpenOffice.org, it has been unanimously chosen branding it to be the granddaddy of all MS Office alternatives. Undisputedly, OpenOffice.org has been the choice of productivity apps by most students, ordinary PC users and even bigger corporations because of its compatibility with a variety of operating systems.
Another noteworthy selection was the JavaScript framework, Prototype. Originally developed by Sam Stephenson, it has proved to be effective in its goal of a more object-oriented JavaScript writing and easier but less breakable manipulation of Document Object Model (DOM). The judges noted that its superiority from Dojo, Google Web Toolkit and Yahoo User Interface, was due in part of its powerful schemes to JavaScript while insulating users’ own JavaScript code from unavoidable browser dependencies.
A partial list of the winners as listed in the InfoWorld website is as follows:
Best of open source in productivity applications
- Audacity, Sound Editing
- Blender, 3D Modeling
- Firefox, Web Browser
- GIMP, Image Editing
- OpenOffice.org, Productivity Suite
-
PDFCreator, PDF Creation
Best of open source in enterprise applications
- Alfresco Community, Content Management
- Compiere, Enterprise Resource Planning
- dotProject, Project Management
- Hyperic HQ, Application Monitoring
- Intalio BPMS, Business Process Management
- JasperReports, Reporting
- Liferay Portal, Enterprise Portal
- Magento eCommerce, E-Commerce
- Pentaho Open BI Suite, Business Intelligence
-
SugarCRM, Customer Relationship Management
Best of open source in collaboration
- Elgg, Social Networking
- MediaWiki, Wiki
- VNC and Chicken of the VNC, Remote Control
- Scalix, Mail and Calendar
-
WordPress, Blog Publishing
Best of open source in networking
- Asterisk, IP Telephony
- AWStats, Log File Analyzer
- InSSIDer, Wireless Network Scanner
- Nagios, Server Monitoring
- NDISwrapper, Wireless Network Interface
- Vyatta, Router, Firewall, & VPN
- Wireshark, Network Protocol Analyzer
-
Zenoss Core, Network Monitoring
Best of open source in platforms and middleware
- CentOS, Server Operating System
- JBossESB, Enterprise Service Bus
- MySQL, Database
- phpMyAdmin, MySQL Administration
- Puppy Linux, Small-Footprint OS
- Talend Open Studio, Data Integration
- Ubuntu, Desktop Operating System
- VirtualBox, Desktop Virtualization
-
Xen, Server Virtualization
Best of open source in security
- AppArmor, Application Security
- Metasploit Framework, Penetration Toolkit
- Ophcrack, Password Cracker
- SmoothWall Express, Network Firewall
- Snort with BASE, Network Intrusion Detection
- Splunk, Security Log Analysis
- TrueCrypt, Disk Encryption
-
Untangle Gateway Platform, Gateway Security
For complete coverage and the rest of the winners see the article at InfoWold.
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/04/32TC-bossies-2008_1.html
How to look for a FREE PDF creating software.
September 5, 2008
Need to find a free PDF creator. Start your search here.
Whether you work in a law firm, church or local chamber office, you are going to need to turn your editable documents into something that cannot be changed and that is easily printable. PDF’s makes exchanging documents in a standard “read-only” file format a trivial task. The creation of PDF files normally requires relatively expensive third party add-on tools.
If you have spent a reasonable amount of time on the Internet, you may have already noticed how some documents, web pages and the e-books take the form of a PDF document. PDF stands for Portable Document Format and it is a file format created by Adobe Systems.
This file type is best applied for document exchange. PDF files are known to be the modern, electronic paper in the age of the Internet. Since PDF files are an open standard for distributing documents in electronic form, they have become extremely popular.
For example, if there is a business document that you would like to distribute and have your employees read – the best format to send it in is with a PDF file. This makes it easier to view and print the document.
How to Look for the Best Free PDF Creating Software
There are a good number of free PDF creating software which you can download online. Before determining which free PDF creating software is best to use, here are the features that you need to look for in a PDF creator:
- Is the PDF creating software user-friendly?
When looking for the best free PDF creating software, make sure that it is relatively simple to use.
- Can the software create PDF files from any format?
The PDF creating software that you should choose should be compatible with documents made using Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, multimedia applications and other business applications. The easiest way for a PDF creating software to do this is by letting you create a PDF document for anything that you can print.
- Is the PDF creating software Windows compatible?
Check whether the PDF creator can work with Windows Vista, the lower versions of Windows and other types of servers and operating systems.
- Does the PDF creating software have the ability to merge and mail documents?
The point of using a PDF creator is to create professional-looking documents. With the help of the merge option, you can easily combine several spreadsheets and other data into one document. Once completed, you should have the option to mail the PDF documents as well.
- Is there an encryption feature?
Some PDF creators would allow you to incorporate passwords for your documents, so that printing, copying or commenting on the documents can be disabled.
Some Honorable mentions…
PDFCreator is an open source application that has been voted best open source office productivity tools by ITWorld for 2008. I have used this for a while now and it does everything that you need for free. It is easy to install and after a few tries you are well on your way to using it. It is as easy as printing a document. You can find it at www.pdfforge.org
If you are smart enough to use the openoffice.org office suite, then you already have a built in PDF creator. Just print your document using the one-click PDF export feature that enables you to easily create PDF files without the need for any additional third party software.
Another free PDF creating software which has most of these features is CutePDF. This PDF converter is developed by Acro Software, and is one of the best free PDF creating software in the market today. To use it, all you need to do is install the two components: the CutePDF Writer printer driver and the CutePDF converter program. To create a PDF from an application like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, you can simply use the print functionality with the installed PDF printer. The action will allow you to save the resulting PDF document.
All in all, these PDF programs presents users with a no-nonsense approach to create the PDF documents that they need quickly and easily.