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