At Contact a Family we have, for a long time, made use of various Free and Open Source Software. Indeed this website is run entirely on free software. We use Free and Open Source software because we find it saves us time, money and enables us to customise it to our own needs as required without legal ramifications.
What is Free and Open source software?
Open source is used collectively to describe software that gives certain freedoms to the end user. There are various software licences that can be described as open source but in essence it means that the source code of the software is made available to the end user along with other rights and freedoms not found in non-open source software.
These rights vary from licence to licence but nearly all include a clause which enables you to redistribute the software legally and without retribution. The often include the right to alter the software as you see fit and also the right not to close source code that has been opened up.
Think of it as somebody selling or giving you a cake.
- Now imagine they give you the recipe with it...
- Now imagine they allow you to change the recipe so you
can omit the peanuts you are allergic to...
- Finally imagine they allow you distribute your nut-less version of the cake but insist you :
- acknowledge their original work,
- mention what changes you made
- give everyone else the same rights that you received.
That's sort of how open source software works.
Free software is another term often used but although the software is often free of cost, the word "free" in this case refers to freedom as indicated above. Free and Open source software includes but is not limited to the GNU/Linux operating system, the Apache web server and the OpenOffice.org office suite.
For a more in depth information you might like to visit the
Open Source Initiative or the Free Software Foundation, authors of the most
popular open source licence the GNU General Public Licence. A good starting point for beginners might be this beginners guide article in Free software magazine.
Open Source software is available for all but we feel it particularly compliments the philosophies found in the voluntary sector.
Free and Open source software in use at Contact a Family
Here is a - non-exhaustive - list of the open source products we use, clicking each will
take you to a website giving more information about it. Note that some of these are available for use under several different operating systems including Linux, Mac OS and Microsoft Windows.
Downloadable resources
Over the years we have accumulated a few resources which might help other organisations investigating Free and Open Source software.
Presentation
Our IT Manager, Ryan Cartwright has spoken at various events on how we have utilised Free and Open source software. One of the more popular presentations, "More than webservers" can be downloaded in PDF format.
Case Study
Adrian De Luca and Ryan Cartwright have written a case study on the use of Open Source Software at Contact a Family. You can download a copy in various formats using the links below. This case study is covered by a Creative Commons License.
You are free:
- to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
- to make derivative works<
Under the following conditions:
- You must give the original author credit.
- You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.
For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
- Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
Download the case study
The Case study is available in the following formats:
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