Open Source Programs for Everyday |
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You’ve probably heard this buzzword floating around without really knowing what the heck it means. Many people have many different takes on what open source really means, but the most important thing is what open source means for you.
In terms of software, open source refers to a program or application that is built and maintained by a community of programmers. This means that the software itself does not belong to any company or person since everyone has access to read the source code and contribute to the project. Generally, an open source project will be freely distributed under the GNU GPL license. In a nutshell, the open source movement results in great software that is freely available to everyone. Apart from the price, other advantages include great community based support and frequent product updates. There are too many open source applications to list, but the link below has a beautiful breakdown by category of programs that fall under the open source category: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_software_packages Keep your eyes open for open source software, because we are likely going to see a whole lot of it in the future. Just to put things into perspective, this article was written in an open source word processor, published to an open source content management system which resides on an open source web server that runs on an open source operating system.
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