Here's The News from
Hen's Teeth Network

Here’s The News from Hen’s Teeth Network

Free Newsletter published by Hen’s Teeth Network (www.hens-teeth.net)

September 2003

Contents:

• Feature news item: Open Source Software
• Product news: OpenOffice.org
• Did you know about: GNU and GPL

Feature: Open Source Software

Software packages freely available, legal, no license fees, fully functional – too good to be true? No, it's the Open Source Software movement gaining ground in offices and homes worldwide.

The Open Source movement is dedicated to the idea that software should be free. Development should be contributed freely and improvements are to be shared. Communities of programmers worldwide contribute to particular projects.

There are 67,000 open source projects covering an incredible range of problem solutions in SourceForge (www.sourceforge.net). The business model that allows open source software to be maintained is that services related to the open source package are sold. These for-fee services allow a commercial level of documentation, training, and technical support to be available. Hen's Teeth Network, for instance, provides installation and training services for the OpenOffice.org office suite software. But the software itself is free.

So if it's free, how good can it be?

Very good indeed. The Apache web server (which is used in 64% of the web sites on the Internet) is open source. Yahoo! Finance uses MySQL, an open source database. Linux is an open source operating system. Netscape (and now Mozilla) is an open source browser. OpenOffice.org is an office suite of programs.

The state of Massachusetts has adopted an open source vision, making the decision on technical grounds. Government agencies from Germany to France to Peru have adopted or are considering Linux-based software as a cheaper alternative to Microsoft products and as a way to both protect themselves from well-known Microsoft vulnerabilities and to control their installation, maintenance, and upgrade costs and schedules. There are open source groups active both in the US and worldwide.

Hen's Teeth Network uses several open source products, including FreeBSD (operating system), Apache (web server), MySQL (database), PHP, Perl and Python (programming languages), OpenOffice.org (office suite), and Mailman (mailing list management).

Are there truly no costs at all? None for the software itself. Download it for free. Use it. Install upgrades when they become available. Share it. Give it away.

But there are associated costs. Open source software does not typically come with “push the button” installation packages. There is some assumption that you will know how to work with your computer and how to make different open source packages on the same computer work with each other. Documentation for open source software is uneven in quantity and quality. Technical support is not available unless you buy it from a company that offers installation support and training (such as Hen's Teeth Network offers for OpenOffice.org office suite software).

Large corporations or government entities embracing open source software may need to expand their information technology staff to support open source software. They find that the savings in licensing costs and the control they gain of their own upgrade schedules more than outweigh the staff costs.

For small organizations or home use, there are fewer complexities. Many users are able to install, maintain and upgrade the few open source packages they use themselves. Some may choose to hire a web services company such as Hen's Teeth Network to come in and do an installation and some training as needed.

On balance, though, many companies find that the total cost of ownership of open source software is lower than that of proprietary products.

Product News: OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is a free open source office suite package that replaces most of the capabilities contained in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, Adobe Acrobat, and Microsoft PowerPoint. Click here for details and a full description of the capabilities of this free package.

• No license fees, ever.
• Fully legal usage (covered by GPL license)
• Free downloads.
• Free updates.
• Full interoperation with documents created with Microsoft Office tools.
• Runs on Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Macintosh platforms

You can open, exchange, even save documents created with Microsoft Office tools.

Why not simplify your life, regain control of your own upgrade schedule, and reduce your costs? Put OpenOffice.org on the computers in your business, your school, your not-for-profit organization, your home.

The download link is on the Hen's Teeth Network page. Or arrange for Hen's Teeth Network to do the guaranteed installation and training for you (in the St. Louis metropolitan area). Please click here to see the details.

Did You Know About: GNU and GPL

GNU was an early open source project (Gnu's Not Unix) to create an open source operating system. Started in the 1980s, it is still going strong. The license created for the GNU project in 1989 is called the GPL (general public license) or the GNU GPL. The GPL has become one of the most widely used licenses in the open source world. See http://www.gnu.org for more detail on the terms of this free software license.

The GPL supports the open source movement's philosophy: software should be free, modifications and improvements should be freely contributed to the community at large. The GPL is a remarkably short document (as license agreements go), written in understandable and clear language.

Essentially, the GPL license gives the user the right to use, distribute, or modify the software as long as the licensee contribute his modifications to the community at large. The GPL covers the OpenOffice.org office suite.

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Thank you.

Candy Zemon, editor

NOTE: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, Microsoft PowerPoint are trademarks of Microsoft. Adobe Acrobat is a trademark of Adobe.