You're probably not all that bothered about whether your systems and applications use Open Source or not. What you do care about is that they do what you want them to do, and they represent good value.
We believe Open Source offers the best value, and are our first choice in information technology solutions when there is a fully developed product available for your application.
Open Source has come of age, and now offers the same functionality and ease of use associated with proprietary fee-for-licence applications.
Open Source systems and applications are designed and built by developers who work co-operatively to produce non-proprietary applications.
This openness provides value in a number of different ways:
- applications are free to install and come with a free licence
- applications are often more secure as any vulnerabilities are found by a wider audience and patched more quickly
- applications often are more compliant with world standards than proprietary systems
and produce more shareable results - longer lifespan as there is no push to create artificial obsolescence to generate profit
- since the source is available, you can add your own features to the application
Many large corporations understand the value of Open Source. Some examples of Open Source applications and the companies behind them are:
- Firefox browser (Mozilla)
- OpenOffice word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. (Sun Microsystems)
- Linux operating system (Redhat, etc.)
Behind the scenes, there are many applications serving you that are also open source. This web site is running on a Linux platform with Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Drupal.
You can continue to learn more about Open Source at opensource.org.