Open Source

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Using open source software can reduce your software licensing costs... By the way, how much are you paying for your current software licenses?
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With just under 90 percent of all PCs running some version of Windows you would be correct to conclude that Microsoft has a monopoly share of the market. Ditto for Microsoft Office. Tired of not having any alternative? Have you considered using an alternative operating system and/or office suite that would be free or inexpensive? OpenOffice.org is a suite of applications that can use Microsoft Office file formats so none of your Microsoft Office files will be orphaned. OpenOffice.org is free and runs on the Linux operating system. It runs on Windows too, so you can try it out without abandoning Windows. What's going on with Linux? Should I be afraid to use it? Open source Linux is one of the fastest growing operating systems in the world. Linux and the Apache Web server became the “killer application” which contributed mightily to the success of the World Wide Web. All good things to be sure, but why should care? Open source software can be copied and distributed without charge. Developers contribute code to various open source projects. Over 130,000 projects are registered on SourceForge.net. The point is not to re-invent the wheel every time you need a piece of software and to encourage the sharing and rapid improvement of program code. While open source software is always free to use (free as in free speech, not as in free beer), you can choose to pay for support and/or maintenance if the project sponsor is setup to do that or if a third party offers support as a paid service. When evaluating solutions to any software computing need, it pays to look at both proprietary and open source alternatives. Free is good. Any problem with that?