Welcome to the Open Source Community
by Rick Timmis
Imagine being able to use the software that you own without license or subscription, to have complete access to the program source code and the freedom to amend it in any way that suits your requirements, to have complete authority on when and where you deploy and copy your software.
You would have the right to copy the software on to as many computers as you wish, and allow as many users of this software as you saw fit without incurring any software costs or breaking any license agreements.
Welcome to the Open Source Community.
The principle of Open Source is simple; program code is open and accessible for all to see and to amend. This means that programmers and software designers have a common set of standards to work to, standards which are available in the public domain and can be utilised by everyone, common standards such as http and ftp. The success of many IT systems is based firmly on these open standards, the Internet being the largest and well-known example.
Made up of many thousands of programmers, engineers and academics from around the globe, the Open Source community collaborates together on software projects using the Internet. Organisations such as IBM, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat Linux and GNU.org are involved and are responsible for some very powerful software, GNU/Linux being the most notable of these projects.
GNU/Linux, often referred to as Linux, is the combination of the efforts of Linus Torvalds, GNU.org and the Open Source Community. GNU/Linux is the fastest growing operating system the world has ever seen; recent studies suggest that more than 80% of the Internet operates on systems using Linux. However, the Open Source community does not limit itself to programming systems software. OpenOffice.Org for example is a mature, feature rich and powerful set of office applications, which offers compatibility with Microsoft's Office suite. The Gnome and KDE projects offer advanced desktop environments with vast sets of applications software. The Mozilla project which provides an advanced web browser with integrated email and HTML authoring tools won the coveted Best Browser of 2003 award from PC World Magazine. OpenOffice.Org is gaining in popularity on both Linux and Windows platforms, for instance the City of Munich have recently migrated 14,000 desktops and users to Linux, KDE and OpenOffice.Org.
However the most remarkable aspect of the Open Source community is the unique way it tests the reliability of its software. Projects release their software in what is described as Beta form (untested), users from around the globe then subject the software to many different uses and environments and send feedback to the project on areas that require improvement. These issues are addressed and the software then released again in release candidate form, again the process of user review takes place. Once all the issues have been resolved the software is released for general use.
This process of open testing in the working environment has proven extremely effective and is the strongest contributing factor in the notoriety for reliability enjoyed by GNU/Linux and projects such as the Apache Web Server. Adaptive has seen the evidence of this high performance and reliability time and time again, for instance, Super Tramp Limited (Europes leading distributor of trampolines and garden play equipment) one of Adaptive's long standing customers, has Linux systems that stand at in excess of 700 days concurrent uptime.
Adaptive specialise in helping organisations take advantage of Open Source Software, offering packaged solutions for email, file and print sharing, Internet connectivity and security, database applications and business management software. We work with the Open Source community and actively partake in project development and testing.