c



 

 




 

By Dong B. Calmada
PANACeA FOSS Training
3 February 2010
Bangkok, Thailand

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-

Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
 


K Learning Objectives
K FOSS Defined
K Brief Background of FOSS
K Linux Distributions Timeline
K Some Benefits of FOSS
K Some Equivalents to Proprietary
Softwares/Applications
K When Does One Use FOSS?
K Conclusion
 



K For participants to:
 Explain what FOSS means.
 Understand a brief history of FOSS.
 Appreciate some of the benefits of
FOSS.
 Know FOSS equivalents to proprietary
softwares/applications
 


ree and pen ource oftware

Software considered to be alternative to a proprietary one

³Proprietary´ denotes a
For example: Mozilla Firefox as
software user's lack of
alternative to Internet Explorer;
freedom to study,
OpenOffice to Microsoft Office;
modify and redistribute
GIMP to Photoshop.
the software












2
2  
2
2  
K 1960s to 70s ± Software sharing culture in
US labs (Stanford, Berkeley, Carnegie
Mellon, MIT)
K 1976 ± Bill Gates' ³Open Letter to
Hobbyists´ advocating that software should
be paid for, including royalties
K Early 80s ± LISP programming language
was taken by MIT, to the dismay of hackers.
K January 1984 ± Richard Stallman quit job at
MIT. Started to worked on GNU, a set of
programming tools.
2
2  
K 1986 ± Free Software Foundation was
born. To promote 'free software' and the
GNU project.
K 1990 ± Bringing 'free software' to the
corporate world with Cygnus.
K 1991 ± Linus Torvalds distributed a Unix-
like kernel and encouraged everyone to
help improve it. The kernel was later
named ³Linux´ and then integrated with
GNU into an operating system called
³GNU/Linux´.
2
2  
K 1992 ± Xfree86 was born, the start of
bringing GNU/Linux to the desktop level.
K 1993 ± Debian and Slackware as
implementations of GNU/Linux were born.
K 1994 ± Apache, the now popular web
server system, was born.
K 1995 ± Red Hat was born.
K 1995 ± Codebase of Unix incorporated
into systems such as FreeBSD, NetBSD,
and OpenBSD.
2
2  
K 1996 ± KDE as desktop environment was
born.
K 1997 ± GNU/Linux grabbed the 25% share
of the server market and grew at 25% per
year.
K 1997 ± GNOME desktop manager was
born.
K 1998 ± Netscape released Netscape
Navigator code base under open source.
This paved the way for development of
Mozilla Firefox.
2
2  
K 1998 ± The term 'open source' was
coined. Led to the formation of Open
Source Initiative and formulation of open
source definition.
K 1999 ± Red Hat was transformed into a
corporation. Other corporations were
established around ³selling´ Linux: not
charging for the software but for the
support services.
 Timeline
beginnin
g
with
1992

ð 


!"


Major
distributions
that started it all:
Debian,
Slackware
and Red Hat
 Timeline
beginnin
g
with
1992

ð 


!"


Major
distributions
that started it all:
Debian,
Slackware
and Red Hat
 2


 
K Economy and affordability ± No license
and maintenance fees for softwares
 Lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
2002 Study: Cost of running Linux is
40% that of Microsoft Windows.
 There are Linux distributions that can
run in low-end machines.
K Stability and Security
 Data integrity ± No viruses
 Basic security mechanisms are built-in
out of the box (compared to Windows'
earlier versions)
 2


 
K Open standards
 Use of internationally recognized
standards that allow portability or
interoperability (e.g., Open Document
Format)
 Promotion of transparency
K Adaptability ± Can be modified to suit a
particularly locality
K Cooperation/collaboration for quality
software - ³With enough eyeballs, bugs are
shallow´
 2


 
K User freedoms ± Freedom to use, study,
modify and distribute a particular software
(through the GPL and open source
licenses)
 "
 #$



% 

&


Category Proprietary FOSS
Office Microsoft Office, iWork OpenOffice, KOffice, Abiword,
Gnumeric, Lotus Symphony
Desktop Adobe PageMaker Scribus
Publishing
Image Adobe Photoshop GIMP, Inkscape
Manipulation/Grap
hics Production
Email Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Thunderbird
Express
Web Browser Internet Explorer Firefox
Voice Over IP Skype Ekiga
Database Microsoft Access, SQL Server OpenOffice Base, PostgreSQL,
MySQL
Media Player Microsoft Media Player, Power Totem, VLC, Mplayer
DVD
Chat Yahoo Messenger Pidgin, Empathy
Video Editing Adobe Premier, Final Cut Cinelerra, Kino
 º
 

'
 (
K Using Linux or BSD through a distribution (e.g.,
Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, FreeBSD)
K Using FOSS applications in a proprietary
operating system. For example, using
OpenOffice for Windows or Mac; using
Thunderbird instead of Microsoft Outlook
K Using a Linux distribution as guest operating
system in Windows or Mac (through a virtual
manager).
K Using cross-platform applications. For
example, Apache for web service, mysql for
database, PHP for web programming.
 º
 

'
 (
Operating Desktop Strengths Limitations
Three B's system Applications

³2ut My Windows FOSS - Familiarity with - Not insulated from

World´ Applications Windows inherent weaknesses
of Windows

³2est of Both - Dual Boot FOSS - Familiarity with - Requires high-end

Worlds´ - Virtual Applications Windows while machine
Machine: One learning Linux - Complex setup,
OS is treated Desktop requiring networking
as guest - Better if the main skills
OS is Linux

³2rave New Linux FOSS - Total - Steep learning

World´ Applications independence from curve about Linux
Windows
- ³Politically-correct´
technology use
 i 

Using FOSS is cool! It is politically correct

(user freedoms) and strategic (mainly
business-wise) while working around the
policy limits in particular localities/countries.

But FOSS is not perfect! Learning curve is

steep and requires user-level support on tap.

Holding hands together for FOSS!

Hand holding to make FOSS flourish!
Thank you!
 j

 )




K This presentation was made using
OpenOffice.org Impress.
K This presentation is an improvement of
previous ones I wrote and used in other
events.
K Linux distro timeline:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=
20090105
K Bill Gates' open letter to hobbyists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to
_Hobbyists
 j

 )




K http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FOSS_A_Gen
eral_Introduction/Introduction
K Linux TCO:
http://www.cioupdate.com/article.php/1049
3_1477911
K Earlier electronic presentations:
 Intro to FOSS PCTA and Training (Ariel
Betan)
 Connecting and Empowering
Communities with FOSS (Dr. Francis
Sarmiento, IOSN)
 j

 )




K Latest statistics on distributions:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=
20100201