User talk:Jw4nvc
Here's me, wandering into the world of wiki.
Feelings: curiosity, hope, playfulness.
Needs: contribution, mutuality.
John Wiley
Santa Barbara, CA
Free and Open Software
Is it true that free software is good? A growing number of people have discovered that the answer to that question is most definitely YES!
For example, it is now possible to download a free web browser that many technical experts say is superior to Microsoft Internet Explorer. If you'd like to see what they mean, click here to learn about Firefox or here to visit their website.
The same non-profit collaboration of technical experts named "Mozilla" (curious about the name?) has another free product to replace your email software that you might like to also learn about named Thunderbird.
Why are these products and a rapidly growing number of others superior? Here are ten reasons:
- The designers often work only for the reward of meeting the needs of others.
- The products are designed to serve the needs of users, rather than of a corporation.
- All work is transparent to anyone interested to examine how it operates. This arises from a collaborative process called "Open Source" software development.
- Anyone can contribute new features they would like to add, so that others can enjoy them.
- Virus and trojan infections rarely affect Open Source software or documents. When flaws or security risks are discovered, they are rapidly addressed.
- Most software that is Open Source, including all the products described on this page, will run on PC, Mac, Unix or Linux computers. In short, nearly every computer in the world.
- Most of these products also have robust language support for international use.
- Open Source software tends to have lower hardware requirements for a given level of performance. For example, Firefox on a 500MHz computer can be compared with the speed of Microsoft Internet Explorer on a 1GHz computer. In short, download a free Open Source product and you may in effect get a free upgrade to your computer hardware. Many organizations have discovered this, and converted all their computers to Open Source software.
- Free documentation and online help is available for nearly all Open Source software, and documents you create are more likely to be compatible with any major computer or software type. An example of this is the growing number of Open Document formats, that let you share your documents with anyone and not just with other users of the same commercial software.
- By using Open Source software, you send a message to commercial software providers that you want freedom of choice for yourself and others. There is ample and growing evidence that commercial software providers are getting this message.
There are many other reasons you could benefit from switching to Open Source software for most or all of your computing needs.
Another outstanding free Open Source product can completely replace the entire Microsoft Office application suite on nearly any computer. A very nice feature for the NVC community is that it will quickly create PDF documents from your old Microsoft Word documents, so they're smaller and easier to share. If you'd like to set your computer and your documents free, click here to read about OpenOffice or here to visit their website.
