Open source is a set of principles and practices governing how to write and distribute software. The most significant feature of this set of principles is that the source code of any software product is openly available and accessible to other software developers.
This practice presents a new business model, one in which the selling of product as a transactional activity is devalued in favour of a model privileging informational and service based transactions. The goal is no longer the selling of products but the selling of services and information.
Open source alternatives allow small businesses, institutions, and individuals to utilize increasing numerous software tools and solutions while reducing monetary overhead. In many, cases open source alternatives are as good as or even better than proprietary commercial products. Or, if they are not better, they at least provide a satisfactory alternative until you can afford better. For instance, while Dreamweaver still sets the standard for HTML editors, a full suite of commercial web design applications is expensive. But there are good alternatives such as Aptana Studio and Nvu. This is true of most software product types:
Let's say, for example, that you do not have access to MS Office Suite Applications. Not to worry. You can download the latest version of OpenOffice.org. For most MS Office Suite Applications and file formats OpenOffice.org will be compatible. It also has the added advantage of having a built in Adobe Acrobat Converter to create your own PDF documents. It is a free software office suite available for many different operating systems including Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, etc. It supports the OpenDocument standard for data interchange.
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