A reader asks:

I’ve been told that there’s lots of good free business software and told to try open source software. Is it really any good and if so why is it free?

You’ve been told the truth, there is a lot of good free software that businesses can use. Free software is not however the same as open source software and to make matters worse there’s also Freeware software. So lets start by clarifying some definitions:

• Open Source – Open Source Software is software that is: Free; for which the source code is available; the user is allowed to create derivative works; does not discriminate against persons or fields of endeavour; does not restrict the software to a particular product or technology and does not restrict what can be distributed alongside it. See the full Open Source Definition for more details.
• Free – Free software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form without restriction.
• Freeware – Freeware software is proprietary software that is made available free of charge. However users are not usually allowed to modify, or redistribute freeware.

The reality is however that only geeks and lawyers really understand the difference and most people use free and open source interchangeably. However if you want to kit out your business with free software then there’s quite a range available, here’s some of my suggestions:

• Operating System – Ubuntu which is a relatively new, but popular distribution of Linux.
• Email – Thunderbird from Mozzilla (who also provide Firefox) is an excellent email client.
• Web Browser – Firefox the second most popular Internet browser.
• Office Suite – Open Office a great office application suite, not quite as feature packed as Microsoft Office but more than enough for most users and best of all available on a range of operating systems.
• Accounting Package – Office Accounting 2008, although I tend to steer away from Microsoft product these days it has to be said that their free accounting software is pretty good, probably the best free one I’ve come across.
• Virtualisation – VirutalBox, not something many readers will need but it can be quite useful, VirtualBox allows you to run a guest operating system on top of a host operating system, very useful if you want to run a Linux desktop but still use Micrsoft Accounting 2008, or if you’re a software developer wanting to test software of multiple different operating systems.

What about you dear reader, do you have any suggestions to add?

Asking John:
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