Open Source

Open source software is free and the licence terms permit distribution of the source code. This means that users (both individuals and organisations) are able to change the software and submit these changes and bug fixes for inclusion in the next release. For popular products this effectively means an unlimited development team and the biggest challenge is managing the change.

About 18 months ago I got really fed up about the fact that I had lost 3 SATA hard disks in the space of about four months. Fortunately no major harm done because at the time I had copies of my data all over the place. This was all managed manually but up to date enough that I never actually lost anything, although it did take a lot of time and effort to put it all back together. Perhaps I was a bit more diligent than usual after the first failure.

For many years Microsoft Office® has been the de facto standard office suite. All the while a Free Open Source Software (FOSS) alternative has been gaining more widespread use in the business community. The product is called OpenOffice and is currently on version 3 which means that is is both a mature and stable product.