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The Linux/Free Software/Open Source world is cram-full of first-class security applications. Best of all, they're not just for Linux, but protect Mac and Windows too. Cynthia Harvey collects 75 to share with us.
Open source and education are natural fits-- open source encourages experimentation and exploration, and the opportunity to learn computing, rather just how to be a little cog in a giant data-processing machine. Cynthia Harvey gives us a taste of the possibilities with this list of 55 open source educational applications.
More and more organizations are relying on open source software to build, test, deploy, and run mission critical IT applications. From small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, organizations worldwide are continuing to find open source as a cost effective means to deliver quality business applications.
Small and home businesses (SOHO) can benefit greatly from using open-source software applications. Cynthia Harveys offers a tasty buffet of 50 to get you started.
Arena Solutions produces and sells a hosted, subscription-based product lifecycle management (PLM) tool for manufacturing companies. Arena founder and CTO Eric Larkin uses open source tools to develop, secure, and maintain the software-as-a-service product. He believes that open source is the path to success for subscription software. "It's a more cost-effective way to build and scale a SAAS business," he says.
Though I am not going to advocate Laissez-faire economics, I do want to point out that the open source world is as close as you can get to a pure free market. The reason is because if you make a product in the open source world, anybody is able to study it, modify it, redistribute it and even sell it without many restrictions.
When it comes to selling a commercial open source product, how different is it really from selling a proprietary product? In the end, if it's a good product, the fact it's open source is probably a minor factor for buyers.
"We had one client who moved from a Novell/Microsoft-based environment to a Debian-based one and they saved something like 80 percent of the cost in the first year - they couldn't have done that moving to Red Hat - not when their licences cost £1000,"Callway said.
