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Computer Software Revolution
The IBM PC originally a proprietary design, later made "open", so others could copy it quickly became the foundation of the computer industry. The software giant, Microsoft, quickly grew into a monopoly. Their products have opened the world of computers to the general public but at a cost. The cost is freedom and choice. The cost also is the proliferation of computer viruses, malware and spyware. The Windows OSes were not designed with security as a priority but for "vendor lock in". Integrated design of many applications makes the OS more complex and difficult to maintain stability in some cases. The consumer (both private and commercial) has lost millions of dollars due to down time (and lost data) of their computers from virus attacks, malware and various stability and operational issues.
The PC open hardware designs have taken the other path. They have improved and improved over the years thanks to the contribution of vendors world wide resulting increased reliability, and performance while the costs have continually lowered to the benefit of us all.
The open-source and free software movement began in the 80s. It has been the birth and the world wide internet phenomena that has fueled it's steady growth. The BSD (Berkley Systems Distribution, University of California) OS developers have played a vital but subtle role in the writing of TCP/IP and FTP protocols which has the open "totally free" BSD software license. Anyone can use the code for whatever purpose. It's their foundation that has helped to grow the internet into what it is today. All major operating systems us their code even Apple bases OSX on the BSD operating system. Linux (which is similar in design to Unix) grew from a "hobby OS" to a major contender today for Microsoft. It's GPL (Gnu Public License) license assures it's design will remain open as it grows and is refined. GPL applications share the open design philosophy and many themselves have obtained phenomenal refinement and popularity among computer users worldwide. The popular Mozilla-Firefox web browser is a good example.
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The Freedom of Choice
Today thousands of companies are running Linux and BSD to power hosting servers, data centers, research computers and so on. These OSes have matured and many Linux distributions are at the point they are fully desk-top ready for the rest of us. Community contributed software and development presents a major problem for the convicted monopolist Microsoft. There is no one company or person they can purchase or threaten to halt it's growth. The can only offer F.U.D. (fear, uncertainty and doubt) as negative propaganda or perhaps help fund companies that attempt hopeless law suits, for whatever reason, against open-source software.
There is also a shift from the economic base of revenue from proprietary software licenses to service / support, training and specialized documentation. These costs a consumer may pay are completely optional in the free software world. Money can be made in the open source world too! It has been said running Windows is like owning a car with the hood welded shut. Today we have a choice to empower us with use of our computers. Open source software not only gives us some outstanding operating systems to run a multitude of free applications on but gives us absolute freedom to choose, to configure (what we do need and do not need), and the freedom from the plagues of viruses and malware if we run Linux or BSD. While the proprietary Apple OSX is an outstanding operating system free from most viruses and very stable, it can't really be classed as part of the "free software" revolution, but certainly it gives us another outstanding choice.
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10 Reasons To Use Linux (or BSD)
- Free or if support is purchased, cheap. CDs can be purchased as well for a very low price. You can copy the software as much as you like and give it away to anybody. If you're a programmer and improve the code, the GPL requires that you INCLUDE your changes or additions you made to share with everyone. Visit The Free Software Foundation , The GNU Operating System Organization, The GNU Public License and and this article explaing the differences between the GPL and the Free Software Licenses.
- Unix-like heritage. Outstanding security and stable design. Administrator - User model offers full control of what runs and who can do what. No company is dictating what you can run and how you configure your system. It is rare that a locked application locks up the OS. In that case usually just stopping the application is enough for recovery.
- Freedom from viruses and malware. The monopoly's products built-in user lock-in design has helped to create these holes. It doesn't look like their products will ever empower the user with open interoperability but more of the opposite.
- Available Documentation and Learning Opportunities. There's plenty of documentation available and it gives an opportunity to learn about the OS and it's various applications.
- Choices. With hundreds of various Linux distributions available, (http://distrowatch.com) one can choose the distro that fits the best (or ask for recommendations on a distro tailored to your need). BSD (http://www.freebsd.org) has a number of offsprings available as well each with a focus somewhat different than the other. (Some examples are http://desktopbsd.sourceforge.net, http://www.openbsd.org/, http://www.netbsd.org, http://www.pcbsd.org/ and http://www.dragonflybsd.org/main/). If one is skilled and has the time, you can even create your own distribution. The code is readily available. Linux makes great applications servers, live "ran off of CD" user/recovery Linuxes, database, web hosting or firewall servers too.
- Linux can do most anything Windows does. Many open source applications such as OpenOffice.org , Firefox or The Gimp run on Linux and Windows with no difference of function. You can burn CDs, play music, use your TV card, scanner, digital camera, send and receive email, enter chat rooms, play games etc.
- Updates happen fast. The open-source community fixes problems fast. Firefox is a fine example with it's recent security updates. It's a matter of days, not weeks, that updated versions are released.
- It runs well on "older" hardware. Even with a full graphic interface many current Linux distros are designed to run well on older Pentium III systems.
- Linux is Versatile As noted above, it's configurations as servers are quite broad. It can cluster mutliple desktops into a load sharing super computer. You can run only in the text mode. You can choose from over a dozen graphical user interfaces though two, KDE and Gnome are the most popular with the various distributions.
- Make a Statement to Promote Further Innovation. The more Linux is used, the more development and support for it will take place. More hardware vendors will offer Linux support as many have opened the code to the community. Even commercial consumer applications, now mostly corporate applications such as Oracle, SAP and Lotus Domino will consider to offer Linux versions since there would be a visible market. In exercising the freedom of choice by using Linux (or BSD) eventually the monopoly will have to change to survive. With hopes it could bring about changes to their proprietary offerings that finally will have the customer (end user) in mind. That could actually benefit their sales and their customers having in improved software products that do not by design focus on vendor lock-in but truely focus on the customer.
We can not predict the future, but open standards and open-source software is here to stay. Volunteers programmers, hosting contributors and various donations world wide are activily contributing as well as numerous commercial compaines such as IBM, HP and Novell to the open source software movement. Contributions are what keep the free software movement going. If you can't contribute money, create information you can share such as application help or installation documentation or even help directly with a particular project you enjoy and or use. (Such as one of the 105,000 projects found on soureforge http://sourceforge.net/)...
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