Free software is a matter of liberty, not price.

Think of free as in free speech, not as in free

beer. Free software is a matter of the users freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and
improve the software.
This means that free software gives users the ability to have total access to a programs source
code, whereas conversely, proprietary software does not allow users access to a programs source
code, nor to make changes to it.

Advantages
Often, free software has the same features as its high-priced proprietary counterparts and that is
only one of the many advantages:

Free to Download. Would you rather pay upwards of a thousand dollars for the program
you need, or nothing?

Many Choices. There are more than 6,500 pieces of free software available today.

Large Communities. Many free software programs have large and active communities
online that offer support to users of free software via blogs and forums.

Supportive of Social Movement. The use of free software supports a movement that
believes computer users should be free from technology that conducts surveillance and
gathers information about what users do on their devices.

Shared Improvements. Users are allowed to have source code, study it, make functional
changes to a program, and redistribute the modified software to others in any way they
choose. A crafty entrepreneur can take advantage of this to save money by developing his
or her own custom business software.

Disadvantages
Despite the upsides, there are also disadvantages to free software:

No Guaranteed Support. Some free software programs dont have a large user base, and
therefore the user support for certain programs can be lacking or nonexistent.

Inconsistent Updates. Since many members of the free software community develop the
code in their spare time as unpaid volunteers, there is a chance that some of the programs
in the free software directory havent been updated in a while, and may not function
properly on newer operating systems.

Varying Interfaces. Some free software programs have a much different user interface
than their commercial counterparts, and can have a steep learning curve.

Where to Find Free and Open-Source Software

There are several places online where you can begin your search for free and open-source
software, though this is by no means a complete list.

The Free Software Foundation offers a large software directory.

The World Wide Web Consortiums W3C Open-Source software list is also thorough.

Osalt.com is useful for finding open-source software alternatives to well-known

commercial software.

Windows users might want to look at Open-Source Windows for a list of the most wellknown open-source programs for the popular operating system, while Mac users should
check the Open-Source Mac.

Conclusion:
Technological innovation has made certain tasks much easier and much more
affordable. Free and open-source software is an example of this. We have networks
where communicating and sharing with people is easier than ever, and it can be
used to benefit individuals and the economy. You dont have to replace all of your
commercial software tools with free or open-source software, but it never hurts to
check your options. You may very well benefit and save your business a ton of
money by checking out these alternatives to commercial software.

Examples of open source software

Linux (see http://www.linux.org/): a computer operating system and kernel

originating as a UNIX system and existing in many versions.

GNOME (see http://www.gnome.org/): a desktop development environment

providing tools for developing desktop applications (as well as its own basic
desktop applications) and available for Linux and other UNIX systems.

KDE (see http://www.kde.org/): another desktop development environment.

Apache (see http://www.apache.org/): a web server program (for supplying

pages in response to requests) used in most web server computers and
available for Windows as well as Linux and other UNIX systems.

Firefox (see http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/): a web client program (for

viewing and hearing web pages) available for Windows and Mac as well as
Linux and other UNIX systems.

Dovecot (see http://www.dovecot.org/): an email server program (for sending

and receiving email) supporting POP3 and IMAP and available for Linux and
other UNIX systems.

Postfix (see http://www.postfix.org): an email server program (for sending

and receiving email) supporting SMTP and available for Linux and other UNIX
systems.

SquirrelMail (see http://squirrelmail.org/): an email application (for reading

and writing email through a web client program) supporting IMAP and SMTP
and available for Windows and Mac as well as Linux and other UNIX systems.

Thunderbird (see http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/): an email client

program (for reading and writing email) supporting POP3, IMAP and SMTP and
available for Windows and Mac as well as Linux and other UNIX systems.

OpenOffice (see http://www.openoffice.org/): an office application set (for

word processing, spreadsheet manipulation, picture drawing and data base
access) compatible with all other major office application sets such as Office
and available for Windows and Mac as well as Linux and other UNIX systems.

KOffice: (see http://www.koffice.org/): another office application set.

Asterisk: (see http://www.asterisk.org/): a Private Branch eXchange (PBX)

providing features such as interactive voice response, conference bridging
and call queuing (as well as analogue, digital and VoIP telephony), supporting
H.323, SIP and IAX2 (and other VoIP protocols), and available for Mac as well
as Linux and other UNIX systems.

FreeSWITCH (see http://www.freeswitch.org/): a VoIP development

environment providing tools for developing applications like phones and
switches, supporting H.323, SIP and IAX2 (and other VoIP protocols), and
available for Windows and Mac as well as Linux and other UNIX systems.

GnuGK (see http://www.gnugk.org/): a VoIP gatekeeper (for some H.323

deployments) available for Windows and Mac as well as Linux and other UNIX
systems.

Some Examples of Open Source (FREE) Software

Some examples of Open Source Software
Accounting:

SQL-Ledger (accounting system)

Anti-virus:

ClamAV

Databases:

LDAP

MySQL (database)

PostgreSQL (relational database with ability to do stored procedures)

Knowledge Management:

Plone (open source content management system)

Knowledge Tree

Domain Name Servers:

Bind

PowerDNS

Telephony:

Asterisk (A Phone system [PBX] that also supports Voice Over IP technology)

Elastix

FreePBX

Trixbox CE

E-mail Servers:

PostFix

QMail

Sendmail

File Servers:

FreeNAS

OpenFiler

Samba

Medical Software:

http://www.oemr.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_healthcare_software

Other Valuable Systems (servers & desktops):

Apache (web server)

CentOS (Linux distribution from Red Hat's development efforts)

Fedora (Linux destop system)

JBoss (J2EE server for Enterprise Java Development)

Slackware (Linux distribution)

Tomcat (Java servlet container)

Ubuntu (a Linux desktop operating system)

Zope (Content management system and portal)

Productivity Software:

Evolution (calendar, contact manager and e-mail client)

Firefox (web browser)

Gimp (image manipulation program)

Open Office (word processor, spreadsheet, etc.)

Thunderbird (e-mail client, news aggregator, etc.)

Programming Languages:

C, C++, Mono, PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, TcL

Spam Filtering:

AmavisD

PostGrey

SpamAssign

Routing/Networking:

DHCPD

IPTables

PF Sense

Virtualization:

KVM

Xen

This is striclty a small example of some open source software. This is a brief list of a few
products which are open sourced to the world and is by no means: a) a complete list, b) endorsed
by Net Easy, c) used by Net Easy. Net Easy has no liability in such list of products.
You're welcome to contact us to have any other products listed here along with new catagories.
However, Net Easy reserve the right to decline such requests as we deem ncessary and we're not
in the business to maintain a list of repositories or mirrors of software.