Discover free software

Famous for its penguin logo, Open Source software was introduced to the voluntary and community sector yesterday (16 April 2003) at the first Northern Ireland Open Source Community (NIOSC) Open Day, held at NICVA's premises.

Open Source is free software: an alternative to off-the-shelf products such as those sold by Microsoft, Lotus and the like. Its programs can be used without license payments and rewritten at will, providing each user’s improvements are offered freely to every other user.

Free software may seem too good to be true, but Open Source is proving to be a real alternative for many recognised companies and organisations world wide. For example, 65% of the internet now runs on Open Source, as do digital set-top boxes and the UK Treasury systems. A well-known success story is www.blackstar.co.uk which has run on Open Source software since the company’s conception.

Open Source is motivated by the fact that all programmers want good software, which has resulted in cooperatively-developed software solutions that can outperform expensive proprietary commercial offerings.

There are many reasons why this should excite the voluntary and community sector:

• Amazing savings. Install ‘OS Office’ for £0 instead of MS Office for £248 per computer.
• There are less licensing issues. The big commercial organisations have there own ‘software police’ which means that unless you buy individual software for each person in your office, you could be fined hundreds of pounds, or even see your chief executive put in prison!
• Get off the treadmill. You can install the best quality, most up-to-date IT solutions in your organisation, without needing to spend money updating and upgrading your systems every time the software giants release a new version.
• An instant helpline. Have you ever tried to get a response from an ‘0800’ software helpline number? It’s not much fun to spend hours waiting on the end of the phone, only to be cut off. Open Source has an online helpline of mutual users, 24 hours a day, giving you more immediate solutions, tailor made for your problem.
• Security. If you buy a proprietary product, your information is being stored on a system that you have no rights or ownership to, since it is licensed to Microsoft, Lotus etc. So if there is a problem, or the ‘licensing police’ come to look at your systems, they have complete access to your information – which not only breeches confidentiality, but also the Data Protection Act. With Open Source, you maintain complete control of your own information. It is for this reason that governments world wide are starting to introduce Open Source.

These are but a few of the commonsense reasons that make Open Source a practical option for many not-for-profits and Small to Medium size businesses (SMEs).

The birth of NIOSC

NIOSC was started in 2002 by Geoffrey Ready at Avec Solutions, and Stephen Gray from NICVA. After a number of conversations, both felt convinced of their responsibility to communicate the benefits of Open Source to charities and SMEs. Open Source is driven by an ethos of cooperation, community and volunteerism, and it is equal in quality and creativity to any off-the-shelf product.

For the first time, the unethical monopoly of information and immoral profiteering of the big software companies is being challenged. Open Source is well equipped for the job; a not-for-profit collective, believing in transparency and freedom of information, and governed by the philosophy of working for the common good.

If you would like to know more about Open Source and how your organisation could benefit from it, visit the NIOSC website atwww.niosc.orgor email Geoffrey Ready at Avec Solutions or Stephen Gray at NICVA.

Overcoming objections : Geoffrey Ready answers some FAQs about Open Source.

Useful websites:

Northern Ireland Open Source Community: www.niosc.org

Open Source Initiative: www.opensource.org