Benefits of FOSS Software: Modification, Collaboration and Cost Savings
1. (FOSS) Presenter: Saleema A. Gulzar MScN, BScN, BA, RN Assistant Professor AKU-SONAM Acknowledgement: Dodo Khan Abdul Muqeet (eHealth)
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8. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Software which is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code.
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12. FOSS defined F ree and O pen S ource S oftware Free Software Open Source Software Software considered to be alternative to a proprietary one For example: Mozilla Firefox as alternative to Internet Explorer; OpenOffice to Microsoft Office; GIMP to Photoshop. “ Proprietary” denotes a software user's lack of freedom to study, modify and redistribute the software
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19. Some FOSS Equivalents to Proprietary Softwares Category Proprietary FOSS Office Microsoft Office, iWork OpenOffice, KOffice, Abiword, Gnumeric, Lotus Symphony Desktop Publishing Adobe PageMaker Scribus Image Manipulation/Graphics Production Adobe Photoshop GIMP, Inkscape Email Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express Thunderbird Web Browser Internet Explorer Firefox Voice Over IP Skype Ekiga Database Microsoft Access, SQL Server OpenOffice Base, PostgreSQL, MySQL Media Player Microsoft Media Player, Power DVD Totem, VLC, Mplayer Chat Yahoo Messenger Pidgin, Empathy Video Editing Adobe Premier, Final Cut Cinelerra, Kino
FOSS has changed the economics of the Information Technology (IT) industry in that it encouraged greater competition in the sector and helped develop a software industry that produced or serviced code and programmes. The open nature of the code is particularly beneficial for use in scholastics institutions and higher education as it allowed future programmers to learn from existing code. This will become part of a policy prerogative for bridging the digital divide. This is a particularly important feature for developing countries in that it moved them away from the threat of technological dependency. The open and collaborative development process that produced FOSS is generally efficient, and produced good programmes. In addition it provided an often-requested level of transparency: something governments needed and often requested from their technology suppliers
Often the decision on software is presented as a "build vs. buy" decision where you look for software that meets your needs and then buy it or you don't find software that meets your needs and then you have to build it from scratch. There is another option that is increasingly attractive. This is the "modify" option. You can start with software that meets some of your needs or which has a useful basic architecture and then modify it to meet all of your needs. This option is difficult with commercial proprietary software which requires that the vendor be agreeable to make the changes. (Often local vendors are not skilled or not permitted to make changes.) However, with open source software, you have access to the underlying instructions "source code" to the software so it becomes a much more feasible project to make the changes yourself or to hire someone to make the changes. Another advantage of this option is that the investment you make in changes to the software accrue to the benefit of you and others who use the software, rather than being locked up in a proprietary system