So it occurs to me that I've been
hiding something a bit. I am not writing this blog in the Blogspot
editor, nor am I using Microsoft
Office. I am, instead, using LibreOffice,
which is an offshoot of the OpenOffice
(descended from StarOffice)
project.
LibreOffice
is, like it's relatives, an open-source suite of programs designed to
accomplish the primary tasks that MS Office does. There is Writer,
Calc, Base, Draw and Impress that I'm at all familiar with. They
are all Windows
compatible (as well as Mac
and Linux), and free for use,
even for modification if you have a bent in that direction (although
there are rules
about distributing modified versions under the same name).
If you're not familiar with open-source
programming, it is a movement which holds that the code that one
uses on one's computer should be openly shared for a variety of
reasons. The simplest is transparency. By making the source code
(the human-legible files from which the executable program is
compiled) available publicly, it makes it effectively impossible for
distributors of programs to hide malicious or questionable code in
their distributions.
Second, it allows people other than
those who 'own' the original code to make full use of it. There are
aspects of both the Windows and Mac operating systems that are only
known to Microsoft
and Apple, which gives them a huge advantage in developing software
to run on those platforms.
By releasing the full, complete code
for software or operating systems, the community that makes use of it
has the opportunity to improve it in ways that users and developers
actually want, instead of being told “this is where you want to go
today”. If a coder or user wants features changed, added or
removed, it is matter of finding someone who will do so, rather than
changing one's own operations to fit the way that one megalithic
manufacturer has decided will be implemented.
There are lots of other open-source
programs out there. I am a big fan of GIMP
and Inkscape, which are
analogous to Photoshop
and Illustrator,
for the Adobe
crowd. Mozilla Firefox,
Thunderbird
and their other projects are all open-source to one degree or
another.
If you'd like to see what's out there
in terms of low-to-no-cost, transparent, community developed
software, go check out www.osalt.com,
which is a central search site discussing both closed-source
(traditional) and open-source software. It's a great little site,
and has directed me to some real gems.
Tomorrow: the problems with open-source
software.
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