• What is open source?
I think it is fitting to mention that the "Internet", as we know it today, began in the 1960's. At this time, there were only about 10,000 computers on the Defense Department project called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. The computers did not come with operating systems so the computer technicians had to write their own software. In the late 1960's and early 1970's university technicians and students continued to experiment with and write programs. UNIX grew out of Bell Laboratories, a division of AT&T. Later the University of Berkley created its own version of UNIX called Berkley Software Distribution, or BSD. By the late 1980's several versions of UNIX and other free software abounded. Richard Stallman, a Physics student at Harvard wanted to write his own programs and he wanted them to be free and compatible with UNIX. Stallman came up with the idea of "Copyleft" using copyright law to guarantee material can be freely used, examined, copied, and distributed. These "copyleft's" can be found in the General Public License (GNU). Stallman created the GCC compiler and the Emacs text editor among several other utilities. A mere 17 years ago, in 1991, Linus Torvalds from the University of Helsinki wrote a Unix-like kernel based on Minix and Linux was born. Open Source Software is not "free" software; it is software with numerous licenses attached to it that is free to look at, free to change, and free to distribute. I believe that the browser wars introduced many people to Open Source Software in the form of Mozilla Firefox.
• What do you believe the future of open source is?
I believe that Open Source Software (OSS) has a bright future. There are so many people writing open source code, and so many students studying open source applications, it is reasonable to believe that OSS may eventually take the place of commercial software from companies like Microsoft or Symantec. If OSS does not replace commercial software, it will at least take its place beside it on the shelf at Office Depot. Oracle is already onboard with open source software. At the last Oracle convention I went to, Novell had a distribution of Suse optimized to run Oracle utilities. I think it is just a matter of time before enough people know how to customize OSS. When that happens, OSS will be a part of everyone's life.
• Name one large company who uses open source.
Hewlett Packard (HP) sells and supports Linux. Many of HP's printers have drivers for Linux platforms. HP claims that Linux can "save valuable time and money and reduce deployment stress, because Linux solutions can offer great performance, reliability, and flexibility at lower cost". I think HP is forward thinking and they will have a larger customer base by offering Linux solutions.
References:
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/321097-0-0-0-121.html (HP)
http://www.opensource.org
www.linux.org
www.novell.com
www.computerhistory.org
www.linuxforu.com
www.linuxbase.org
www.linux-watch.com
www.openknowledge.org
Short list of interesting open source software:
Moodle (http://moodle.org/), a popular course management system like Blackboard.
Tux Paint (www.newbreedsoftware.com/ tuxpaint/) is an easy-to-use draw program.
Blender (www.blender3d.comlcrns/Home.2.0.html), for modeling and animation.
Qcad (www.ribbonsoft.com/qcad.html), for computer aided 2-D drafting
GIMP (www.gimp.org/), for image manipulation.
ImageMagick (www.imagemagick .org/script/index.php), for creating images from scratch.
FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/ wiki/index.php/Main_Page) a mind mapping tool.
1HMC Cmap Tools (http://cmap.ihmc.us/) a concept map tool.
Audacity (http://audacity .sourceforge.net/) a best audio-editing
Dynebolic (www.dynebolic.org/) and Jahshaka (www.jahshaka.org/) tools for sound and video recording, editing, encoding, and streaming.
And of course OpenOffice Suite (www.openoffice.org/)
StarOffice (www.sun.com/software/staroffice/) from Sun comes at a very reasonable price.
Nyu ("new view"; www.nyu.com/) for webpage building.
Firefox (www.mozilla.com/firefox/) web browser.
Apache web server software (www.apache .org/).
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