~Promote & Develop Interest for Other People to Use Open Source Software~

### Unlike proprietary off-the-shelf software, which comes with restrictive copyright licenses, open-source software can be given away for no charge. This means that its creators cannot require each user to pay a license fee to fund development. Instead, a number of alternative models for funding its development have emerged.

###  Launch pad provides repository hosting, use it even if you're not hosting anything else there.

###  Blog about your software, show screenshots. People love screenshots.

###  Hire a designer to make a distinctive style sheet.

###  Pay lots of attention to the web design of your site. Be stylish, it really helps.

###  Launch advertisement that shows the advantages of Open Source Software to the public.

###  Provides free courses to students or lecturers to explain how to use the software. For example : OpenOffice.

###  The software developer should be facilitating the installation of all the ways Open Source software so people do not experience difficulty.

###  Software can be developed as a consulting project for one or more customers. The customers pay to direct the developers efforts : to have bugs prioritized and fixed or features added. Companies or independent consultants can also charge for training, installation, technical support, or customization of the software.

###  Another approach to funding is to provide the software freely, but sell licenses to proprietary add-ons such as data libraries. For instance, an open-source CAD program may require parts libraries which are sold on a subscription or flat-fee basis. Open-source software can also promote the sale of specialized hardware that it interoperates with, as in the case of the Asterisk telephony software, developed by a manufacturer of PC telephony hardware.

Suggestion name(link) of blog and forums that discuss about Open Source : 

http://www.cmsreview.com/Forums/OpenSource.html

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source?tag=mantle_skin;content

http://www.phpbb.com/

http://www.opensourceinitiative.net/

http://vanillaforums.org/

~History of Open Source~

 

>>>  Open Source Software (OSS) is a computer software that is available in source code form the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.

>>>  Open Source software is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open source software is the most prominent example of an open source development and often compared to (technically defined) user-generated content or (legally defined) open content movements.

>>>  The free software movement was launched in 1983. In 1998, a group of individuals advocated that the term free software should be replaced by open source software(OSS) as an expression which is less ambiguous and more comfortable for the corporate world. Software developers may want to publish their software with an open source license, so that anybody may also develop the same software or understand its internal functioning. Open source software generally allows anyone to create modifications of the software, port it to new operating systems and processor architectures, share it with others or, in some cases, market it. Scholars Casson and Ryan have pointed out several policy-based reasons for adoption of open source, in particular, the heightened value proposition from open source (when compared to most propriety formats) in the following categories : 

•  Security
• Affordability
• Transparency
• Perpetuity
• Interoperability
• Localization

 

 

~tErm FREE in OpEn SoUrcE SoftwarE~

>>> Free and open source software (F/OSS, FOSS) or free/libre/open-source software (FLOSS) is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code. This approach has gained both momentum and acceptance as the potential benefits have been increasingly recognized by both individuals and corporations.


>>> In the context of free and open-source software, free refers to the freedom to copy and re-use the software. rather than to the price of the software. The Free Software Foundation, an organization that advocates the free software model, suggest that, to understand the concept, one should "think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer".


>>> FOSS is an inclusive term that covers both free software and open source software, which despite describing similar development models, have differing cultures and philosophies. Free software focuses on the philosophical freedoms it gives to users, where as open source software focuses on the perceived strengths of its peer-to-peer development model. FOSS is a term that can be used without particular bias towards either political approach.


>>> Free software licenses and open source licenses are used by many software package. While the licenses themselves are in most cases the same, the two terms grew out of different philosophies and are often used to signify different distribution methodologies.



Naming

a) Free Software

      ===> The Free Software Definition, written by Richard Stallman and published by Free Software Foundation (FSF), defines free software as a matter of liberty, not price. The earliest known publication of the definition was in February 1986 edition of the now-discountinued GNU's Bulletin publication of FSF. The canonical source for the document is in the philosophy section of the GNU Project website. As of April 2008, it is published there in 39 languanges.

b) Open Source

     ===> The Open Source Definition is used by the Open Source Initiative to determine whether a software license can be considered open source. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens. Perens did not base his writing on the four freedoms of free software from the Free Software Foundation, which were only widely available later.

c) FOSS

     ===> The first known use of the phrase free open source software on Usenet was in a posting on 18 March 1998, just a month after the term open source itself was coined. In February 2002, F/OSS appeared on a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to Amiga computers games. In early 2002, MITRE used the term FOSS in what would later be their 2003 report Use of Free and Open Source Software(FOSS) in the U.S Department of Defense.

d) FLOSS

    ===> The acronym FLOSS was coined in 2001 by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh for free/libre/open source software. Later thet year, the European Commission(EC) used the phrase when they funded a study on the topic.
   ===> Unlike libre software, which aimed to solve the ambigiuty problem, FLOSS aimed to avoid taking sides in the debate over whether it was better to sat "free software" or to say "open source software".
  ===> Proponents of the term point out that parts of the FLOSS acronym can be translated into their languanges, with for example the F representing free (English) or frei (German), and the Lrepresenting libre (Spanish of French), livre (Portuguese), or libero (Italian), and so on. However, this term is not often used in official non-English, documents, since the words in these languange for free as in freedom do not have the ambigiuty problem of free in English.
  ===> By the end of 2004, the FLOSS acronym had been used in official English documents issued by South Africa, Spain, and Brazil.

Criticism of "FLOSS" and "FOSS"

~~~>>  The term "FLOSS" and "FOSS" have come unde rsome criticism for being counterproductive and sounding silly. For instance, Eric Raymond, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative has stated, "Near as I can figure..people think they'd be making an ideological commitment..if they pick 'open source' or 'free software'. Well, speaking as the guy who promulgated 'open source' to abolish the colossal marketing blunders that were associated with the term 'free software', I think 'free software' is less bad than 'FLOSS'. Somebody, please shoot this pitiful acronym through the head and put it out of our misery".

~aDvaNtagE oF OpEn SoUrcE SofTwarE~

 Financial savings

~~> The software will be available for free. In other words, the acquisition costs are considerably lower than those of the traditional, proprietary software that may be purchased.

~~> In many cases people also want the services connected with the software acquisition that will cost; installation, operation, training support, however compared with proprietary software the same case often applies here.

 

Software code that sustains a critical eye!

~~> The people who originally write the software always know that anyone can see in full detail how it works or what solutions have been chosen. They will therefore naturally do as good a job as possible in order that they can be as proud as possible of the product and avoid criticism as much as possible.

~~> It is perhaps simplest to conceal the source code and thereby obtain a little more freedom as long as the end product is ok. However by producing in accordance with the ”Open Source code” concept, one makes a clear statement that ”my method withstands the light of day and a critical eye!”

 

Easy integration and interaction

~~> Open Source code means that it is relatively simple to adapt programs so that they can work with each other because you can see from the source codes how a program ”thinks” and how you should approach it to share or exchange data, for example.

Rapid debugging, rapid further development

~~> Because the source code is open, the developer/producer does not just receive feedback on any errors or problems, or proposals for new functions, but feedback reports that can specify down to the code level what should be done – it is therefore far simpler for the producer to implement changes on the basis of feedback reports since these often say precisely what program changes must be made and also any errors in the original source code may be corrected by the person who detects the error without having to wait for the original programmer.

 

Avoiding lock-in to one supplier

~~> It is obviously great to have one software supplier to turn to – perhaps to provide services connected with the software, such as installation assistance, courses, operation, support and more, and you have someone to ring if you need help or information concerning the software.

~~> But you decide to whom you turn! Don’t end up in the situation where by acquiring a product from a supplier, you have simultaneously locked yourself into only being able to obtain related assistance from the same supplier. For example, if you have other software must interact with the initial software, you are forced to be grateful for what this single supplier has to offer and if the supplier goes bankrupt or your collaboration ends in another way, you are left high and dry when it comes to future debugging or new versions.

aLL ab0uT OpEn SoUrcE SoftwarE

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.

Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code.

The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:

1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

2. Source Code

The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.

3. Derived Works

The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

4. Integrity of the Author's Source Code

The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor.

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

7. Distribution of License

The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.

8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product

The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.

9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software

The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.

10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral

No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.

History of Open Source Software :

• In 1983, Richard Stallman launched the GNU Project to write a complete operating system free from constraints on use of its source code.

•  In 1989, the first version of the GNU General Public License was published. A slightly updated version 2 was published in 1991.

• In 1989, some GNU developers formed the company Cygnus Solutions.

• The Linux kernel, started by Linus Torvalds, was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991.

•  The BSD lawsuit was settled out of court in 1993, FreeBSD and NetBSD (both derived from 386BSD).

•  KDE was founded in 1996 by Matthias Ettrich. At the time, he was troubled by the inconsistencies in UNIX applications. 

•   In 1997, Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar, a reflective analysis of the hacker community and free software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998 and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator Internet suite as free software. This code is today better known as Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.

• In August 1999, Sun Microsystems released the Star Office suite as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License. The free software version was renamed OpenOf All about open source software 

Open-source software is software whose source code is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees.  Open source code evolves through community cooperation. These communities are composed of individual programmers as well as very large companies. Examples of open-source software products are:

Application software

§  7-Zip — file archiver

§  Blender — 3D graphics editor

§  Eclipse — development environment comprising an IDE

§  GIMP — graphics editor

§  LibreOffice — office suite

§  Mozilla Firefox — web browser

§  Mozilla Thunderbird — e-mail client

§  NASA World Wind — virtual globe, geobrowser

§  FreePlane — mind map

Operating systems

 

Ubuntu is a popular open-source computer operating system, and a form of Linux.

§  FreeBSD — operating system derived from Unix

§  Linux/GNU — family of Unix-like operating systems

§  OpenSolaris — Sun Microsystems's discontinued operating system derived from Unix

§  Symbian — real-time mobile operating system

Programming languages

§  PHP — scripting language suited for the web

§  Python — general purpose programming language

Server software

§  Apache — HTTP web server

§  Drupal — content management system

§  MediaWiki — wiki server software, the software that runs Wikipedia

§  MongoDB — document-oriented, non-relational database

§  Moodle — course management system or virtual learning environment

§  RenovatioCMS — content management system

§  WordPress — blog software

•       fice.org, and coexists with StarOffice.

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