OPEN SOURCE Software and designs: What is it and Should we use it.
I think the answer is simple, YES!
Open source software can be employed to effect cost wise solutions to reduce financial load on individuals, small businesses and corporations.
What is it?
Open source software and designs have been released by the author(s) to the public. Most Open source solutions are released under the GPL or General Public License. Open source software represents effort to further the betterment of human kind.
This web site is an example of the fruit from the internet garden community.
The visual layout for this web site was inspired by 'Nautica Liquid' a template authored by Nautica. He chose to share his vision with the world.
Open Source layout catalogs have become invaluable to my clients as idea and inspiration wells.
Open Web Design
This layout has been remade from scratch including all images and pallets. I developed a random selector for fractional CSS style sheets to change the layout on refresh. Each layout style sports images from photos taken on walks in the woods where we live in North Carolina.
This web site is hosted by a budget, $7 per month hosting account that resides on a server driven by Linux, an Open Source operating system.
The web site is delivered to you by, Typo3, a "swiss army knife" enterprise level content management System (CMS). A CMS offers rapid development and instant access to web content for publishing and editing. Under development since 1998, Typo3 has attracted top shelf developers who contribute to the furthering of the project. I have spent 3 years mastering Typo3 administration and have watched in fascination as both the user and contributor communities continue to grow.Who uses Typo3?
A Few recommended Open Source solutions:
- OpenOffice.org - An intuitive productivity suite targeted to replace to Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint).
Whole Countries are ditching Microsoft Office for OpenOffice.org.
- First Approved the Open Document Format word processor!
- Operates on all major OS's
- Free! - Typo3 - An open source Enterprise Content management System - there are 2 web sites of interest: www.typo3.com and www.typo3.org.
- Open Web Designs - A hive of inspired designers striving to further the craft of web design.
- Firefox - A highly recommended standards compliant web browser (released by Mozilla).
- Thunderbird - a flexible and intuitive Email Client with spam filtering: for POP3, IMAP & NEWS (released by Mozilla).
- Filezilla - A full feature ftp client.
- Exact Audio Copy (EAC for short) is used to extract tracks from an Audio CD to your computer's hard disk with high precision. (detailed info)