Free and open source software: not just for geeks

For years free software has had a huge impact on our world; Apache runs half of all web sites, 65% of email traffic is sent via Sendmail, and about 1 in 5 of us use Firefox as our web browser.  All of these solutions were developed by altruistic programmers whose focus was technological, not commercial; and once developed, they were distributed for all to use for free.  For many small and medium sized businesses though, free software seems to have passed them by, which means there may be significant savings to be made from deploying it in your organisation.

• Microsoft Office Standard 2007 (word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software) - alternative, OpenOffice  £300 saved
• Microsoft Outlook 2007 (email and calendar software) - alternative, Mozilla Thunderbird, Sunbird and Lightning £80 saved
• Adobe Acrobat Standard 9 (creates PDF’s) - alternative, CutePDF² £226 saved
• Long distance telephone calls - alternative, Skype² (variable savings but potentially high)
• Ipswitch WS_FTP Professional (FTP client for file transfer) - alternative, FileZilla £45 saved
• PGP Whole Disk Encryption (file and disk encryption software) - alternative, TrueCrypt £95 saved

Business people are wary of free software, (everyone knows ‘there's no such thing as a free lunch').  However, this is one case where the lunch really does seem to be free, as long as you make sure the software is legitimate and has undergone some scrutiny (either the source code is available or it has been tested through wide use).  The most commonly cited objection to deployment of free software is a lack of technical support, “Who do I call when I’ve got a problem?”.  A fair point, but the community based support on free and open source products is generally very good, and in practise the same can be asked of any commercial software.  Who would you call if you had a problem with Microsoft Word?  It’s very unlikely to be Microsoft.

When you get started you’re not on your own either, there’s extensive technical guidance available online for deployment, and IT Consultants provide services to deploy free and open source software. With these hurdles overcome, savings like those above, worth over £700 per user, are within your grasp.

1 Check the license agreement or terms of use, which should state that the software is free for ‘commercial use’.  Many applications are only free for ‘non-commercial use’, i.e. at home for personal and non business activities only.
2 Free for commercial and non-commercial use, but not ‘open source’