Open Source Software Benefits

Free Open Source Software (FOSS) is good for your business. Two important reasons are the significant cost savings over proprietary software and that it is good for the environment. FOSS is also the only class of software that can respond rapidly to the ever more difficult challenges facing todays businesses. It is also free to use, modify and share with others.

Cost Savings

First, most Open Source software is free of charge. It is very hard to beat free. FOSS is also free of the encumbrance of restrictive licensing terms. It can be installed and used on as many computers as you need and it can be copied and given to others.

But free software does not mean second rate or inferior quality. In the more than thirty years I have worked in the computer industry, my experience has been that Open Source software has the highest quality by far. It has fewer bugs in the first place and those bugs that do exist are fixed in a much more timely manner than any closed source, proprietary software company with which I have ever dealt.

Environmental Benefits

There are significant environmental benefits to using Open Source software, in addition to the obvious cost savings that derive from using software that is free of cost.

Reduced Power Consumption

It has been shown definitively that Open Source Software, specifically Linux, uses the resources of your computer much more efficiently than do other operating systems. This translates to a lower usage of power and concomitant savings on your electrical bills. In fact, the Linux operating system has been shown to reduce power consumption by 12% compared to Windows — and that is without any specific tuning.

There is a program available from LessWatts.org that can help trim even further the power usage of your Linux computer. It does this by identifying other programs that do not need to be run on your computer. By stopping these programs and configuring your Linux computer to not run them, maximum operational efficiency can be obtained. Running programs that are not needed can waste considerable amounts of power. This is also good for security as programs that are running but not needed can be entry pathways for bad people and malware.

Keeping Older Computers Out of the Landfill

Reduction of e-waste is another tremendous benefit of Linux. According to a U.K. government study as reported on CNN, e-waste can be reduced by up to 50% by keeping older computers running longer. Linux can do this because it requires less hardware to run thus extending the useful lifetime of older computers.

Be sure to see the Green Computing links in the sidebar.

Free as in Speech

Open Source software is also free from many of the legal encumbrances of proprietary software. It still has a license called the Gnu General Public License, or GPL, but the GPL is more about defining all of the things you are free to do with the software than about what you cannot do.

For example you can freely share software licensed under the GPL with your friends and co-workers. You are also free to use it on as many computers with as many processors and as much memory (RAM) as you like.

All proprietary licenses are very restrictive, and some more than others. One program with which I am familiar uses a highly restrictive fee structure based on the number and speed of the processors and a specific amount of memory in the computers on which it is run. You would have to pay the company to configure the software that you have already paid for to use any more of your computer’s resources.

If you like and have the skills you can make modifications to the software to improve its usefulness or fix a problem; in this event you must make those changes available to the Open Source community at large.

Lots of Software

Best of all there is lots of Open Source software of all types available for Linux. In fact there are far more choices for any type of software, such as 0ffice suite software, than there is of closed, proprietary software. No matter what kind of software, you can find just the right one for your needs.