| The concept of open source is perfectly | | | | volunteers. This W3C compliant application |
| American. Its foundation is built on people | | | | helps users overcome the pitfalls of other |
| sharing a knowledge base and working together | | | | proprietary Internet navigation tools. |
| to create a better end product. The | | | | |
| movement's success finally is taking a strong | | | | -- Asterisk (telephony): Asterisk is the |
| foothold, and now it seems no matter where | | | | most-widely known open-source PBX solution |
| users, administrators or developers turn, | | | | for VoIP telephony. It is a viable (and |
| there is a useful, viable open-source | | | | affordable) alternative to POTS, with broad |
| solution waiting - and all are free! | | | | technical support bases available online for |
| | | | administrators. |
| So many credible contributions have been made | | | | |
| that it now is time to rank these | | | | -- OpenOffice (word-processing suite): This |
| opportunities and offer the top seven | | | | office-productivity suite is comparable to MS |
| open-source solutions available today for | | | | Office, without the hefty price tag. |
| businesses and personal users. If you have | | | | OpenOffice comes with Writer - a word |
| not encountered these solutions yet, you | | | | processor; Calc - a spreadsheet; and, Impress |
| soon will. | | | | - a presentation package. Its documents can |
| | | | be viewed, modified and re-saved inside and |
| -- Ubuntu (operating system): Ubuntu is a | | | | out of the proprietary MS Office suite, so |
| community developed, Linux-based operating | | | | productivity and individual licensing are not |
| system used in enterprise and personal | | | | issues. |
| environments for laptops, desktops and | | | | |
| servers. It contains all the necessary | | | | -- PHP (programming/coding): Perl Hypertext |
| applications, including a Web browser, | | | | Preprocessor, or PHP, is a scripting language |
| presentation, document and spreadsheet | | | | that allows web developers to create dynamic |
| software and instant messaging. And for | | | | content that interacts with databases. PHP |
| administrators, this OS lacks much of the | | | | applications most commonly are used with |
| "bulk" weighing down these solutions yet, you | | | | Linux servers and MySQL databases. The |
| soon will. | | | | language provides servers with functionality |
| | | | similar to that provided to the Windows |
| -- Wiki (project): A wiki is a collaborative | | | | platform by Active Server Pages technology. |
| Web site that can be edited by anyone with | | | | |
| access to it. Most users have experience with | | | | -- Zimbra Collaboration Suite (e-mail): This |
| the popular encyclopedia-based wiki called | | | | high-powered collaboration suite for e-mail |
| Wikipedia; however, a wiki has important uses | | | | and calendaring comes in two versions: open |
| within the private, corporate structure as a | | | | source, which is unsupported; and, closed |
| broad-based communications tool between | | | | source, which contains commercially supported |
| employees, clients and vendors. | | | | components. The system's user interface |
| | | | includes tool tips, draggable items and |
| -- Firefox (Web browser/Internet | | | | right-click menus. It also includes search |
| application): Mozilla Firefox is a free, | | | | capabilities and date relations. The Zimbra |
| cross-platform, graphical Web browser | | | | server can run on a variety of open-source |
| developed by the Mozilla Foundation and | | | | distributions, as well as Mac OSX. |