About the Open Source Initiative The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a California public benefit corporation, with

501(c)3 tax-exempt status, founded in 1998.

The OSI are the stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD) and the communityrecognized body for reviewing and approving licenses as OSD-conformant. The OSI is actively involved in Open Source community-building, education, and public advocacy to promote awareness and the importance of non-proprietary software. OSI Board members frequently travel the world to attend Open Source conferences and events, meet with open source developers and users, and to discuss with executives from the public and private sectors about how Open Source technologies, licenses, and models of development can provide economic and strategic advantages. Please contact the OSI if you are interested in having us help you develop, arrange, or conduct educational conferences, programs, courses of instruction, and/or online educational seminars relating to Open Source (non-proprietary) software. Mission Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit corporation with global scope formed to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community. One of our most important activities is as a standards body, maintaining the Open Source Definition for the good of the community. The Open Source Initiative Approved License trademark and program creates a nexus of trust around which developers, users, corporations and governments can organize open source cooperation.

The Open Source Definition Introduction 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.

Why would you want to have Open Source software on your computer? Lets consider a few reasons:

(1) First reason that every one thinks of is that Open Source softwa well it certainly is about 95% of the time but it can be paid too alth will be less restrictive. Nevertheless it can save you hundreds of doll (2) Another often overlooked aspect is that you can have full access to the source code of the software. This is a great blessing for someone who needs the ultimate customization. (3) You can actually help in the development by fixing bugs, releasing your changes to the code (in accordance with the license of course). (4) They may also offer more features then their commercial counterparts. With that out of the way, lets get to the fun part and lets save some bucks. I will be giving information on my personal favorites (which would generally mean BETTER) open source replacements. There are however other choices as well, so drop a line or two if our choices differ! Microsoft Office ==> OpenOffice OpenOffice provides a great alternative to Microsoft Office. The complete suite comes with a word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation (Impress), drawing and graphing tool (Draw), tool for creating equations and formulae (Math) and finally a database tool which also builds reports and forms (Base). All components are multiplatform and multilingual. Its available for Windows, Linux, Mac and Solaris.

Microsoft Outlook Express ==> Mozilla Thunderbird Thunderbird is a full-featured open source email client which provides an excellent open source alternative to all commercial email clients. Thunderbird offers a large features set, some of which are: support for POP and IMAP, built-in RSS support and spell checking. Thunderbird also has an integrated usenet news reader. The userinterface is completely customizable. Did I mention the many add-ons you can have? Microsoft Internet Explorer ==> Mozilla Firefox (Relax, I know you are using it) Firefox needs no introduction, still I will try Firefox is an advanced browser built with its roots in the old Netscape browser. Today Firefox offers tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, many search extensions and many other extensions and toolbars. The support for Firefox by commercial companies is growing and this is clearly seen by the number of extensions/toolbars they develop. So how did I do? Winzip or WinRAR ==> 7-Zip 7-Zip is an excellent file archiver that can easily replace Winzip and WinRAR on your machine. It has a high compression ratio. It supports the following formats for packing/unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR and the following for unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM and DEB. It integrates well into the Windows shell( right click menu). Also 7-Zip is available in 60 languages. Microsoft Visio ==> Dia Dia can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flow charts, network diagrams, and simple circuits. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape. It can load and save diagrams to a variety of formats.

JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA or Other Commercial IDEs ==> Eclipse Java based IDE which aims to be a universal development toolkit. Even though it has its roots in Java eclipses plug-in base allows it to edit files for almost any environment including but not limited web, c/c++ and of course Java. Nero ==> InfraRecorder InfraRecorder is an easy to use CD and DVD burner application. It supports virtually all different formats including rewritable disc, multi-session disc and dual-layer DVDs. Also audio CDs can be created with just a few simple drag drops in InfraRecorder. Other important features include disc copying, audio CD ripping and ISO generation and burning images. InfraRecorder is available in more than 20 languages.

VMware or Microsoft Virtual PC ==> VirtualBox VirtualBox allows you to run a guest operating system on your PC, in this case either Windows or Linux based. The guest operating system support covers most Windows (including Vista) and Linux versions. VirtualBox is a very stable tool. I have run Ubuntu inside Windows without any problems. Networking, Clipboard, Disk Management are all seamless. Microsoft Remote Desktop for Windows ==> TightVNC TightVNC is an open source remote desktop application. It allows you to control a graphical user session on a machine remotely through the network. Both VNC server and client runs on multiple platforms. You just need to run the server on the machine you want to access and use the TightVNC viewer to access the system remotely. Some extra features like send special key strokes, file transfers and fullscreen view are also very handy. Microsoft Internet Information Services ==> Apache HTTP Server Apache HTTP Server is the most deployed and used web server on the Internet. It is always up-to-date with the latest HTTP standards and runs on any modern operating system. Apache is secure. There are plenty of extendable modules available that make it even more lucrative choice to the MS IIS. Not to mention the packages that bundle together Apache, perl, php, Mysql, Filezilla, Mercury mail. Definitely one of my personal favorites. Pheew.. thats some information. But wait I am not finished yet, keep visiting often and check back because soon we will be replacing the complete Adobe Creative Suite with open source software!