Free and Open Source Software: FOSS

disclaimer

FOSS is often used in mission-critical environments.

Many industry standard applications are, in fact, free and open-source programs. What follows is a list of selected notable FOSS programs. Extensive lists of FOSS software can be found at the UNESCO and UNDP websites. There are many web sites that host FOSS development or catalogue FOSS programs. sourceFORGE.net and freshmeat.net are among the more popular.

• Firefox, Camino and Mozilla Suite are FOSS Internet browsers developed by the Mozilla project that was established after Netscape opened the source code for its browser in 1998.
  http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
  http://www.caminobrowser.org/ 
  http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/

• The Thunderbird e-mail manager and the Nvu web editor projects carry forward applications that were originally developed as components of the Mozilla browser suite.
  http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
  http://www.nvu.com/

• OpenOffice.org is a software suite that provides advanced office and administrative automation. An offshoot of Sun Microsystems’ StarOffice, OpenOffice runs on all major operating systems, including MS Windows, as its cross-platform functionality is based on open XML standard file formats.
  http://www.openoffice.org/

• The open-source Web server software Apache, which sends Web pages to the computer of someone accessing a web site, has dominated its market segment since 1996 and now holds at least twice the market share of its nearest competitor.
  http://www.apache.org
  .

• GNU/Linux has long been popular as an operating system running computers that perform as Web servers. Recent surveys show that GNU/Linux runs 29.6 per cent of Web servers. In the last few years GNU/Linux has increasingly penetrated both the high and low ends of the enterprise market for server operating systems. GNU/Linux readily runs on Intel/AMD type PCs, while versions for other hardware have been developed as well. To install GNU/Linux, one must have a "distribution". You can buy a CD, download or make a distribution. Linux Online is just one website with comprehensive information, FAQs and links. However, there are many professional and amateur online resources for GNU/Linux that may be explored and used.
  http://www.gnu.org/

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• Moodle is a course management system designed to help educators create online courses or and virtual learning environments. Moodle is conceptually based on social constructionist pedagogy.
  http://moodle.org/

• The BSD/OS/FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD family of operating systems are UNIX-based, free/open-source operating systems similar to GNU/Linux. Developed at the University of California-Berkeley in the 1970s, BSD is considered one of the most secure and stable operating systems and runs a large percentage of Internet servers. The core of Apple’s Macintosh operating system, Darwin, is based on FreeBSD and has remained in the open-source realm.
  http://www.bsd.org/
  .

• GNU was the predecessor of GNU/Linux. It is a free version of UNIX tools created by Richard Stallman in 1984. GNU stands for “GNU is not UNIX”.
  http://www.fsf.org/
  .

• Sendmail is a free/open-source programme used for routing approximately 40 per cent of the email that travels over the Internet.
  http://www.sendmail.org/

• GNU Privacy Guard is a personal ecnryptiona nd decryption software compliant with OpenPGP.
  http://www.gnupg.org/

• Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) is a scripting language freely available for UNIX, MS/DOS, Macintosh, OS/2 and GNU/Linux, among others. Perl has powerful text-manipulation functions and is used extensively for programming Web electronic forms, and generally for generating interfaces between systems, databases and users exchanging data on the Internet.
  http://www.perl.com/ ; http://www.perl.org/ ; http://www.perlfoundation.org/

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• BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) is a free/open-source programme that allows Internet domain names to be entered as text-based names instead of as IP addresses, or series of numbers, making it easier for users to reach sites on the Internet.
  http://www.isc.org/products/BIND/
  .

• The Beowulf Project is a method of connecting computers to form a high-performance computer (Beowulf cluster) that approaches "super-computer" performance. Since a Beowulf cluster can be developed from common, off-the-shelf computers utilizing FOSS, a Beowulf cluster "super-computer" can be built and implemented at a fraction of the cost of other systems with similar computing capacity.
  http://www.beowulf.org/
  .

• GNOME and KDE are desktop graphic user-interfaces that run on top of GNU/Linux and UNIX, providing user-friendly computing to the non-programmer open-source community.
  http://www.gnome.org/ ; http://www.kde.org/
  .

• MySOL and Postgres are database servers.
  http://www.mysql.com/ ; http://www.postgresql.org/
  .

• The Gimp is a graphics programme widely distributed with GNU/Linux. A version for the Windows operating system also exists. It is sometimes called "free photoshop".
  http://www.gimp.org/

A tabular overview of many FOSS applications as well as a description of graphics programs is available at the FOSSFP website.

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