The classic scenario a few years back was as follows. One used to work on UNIX Desktops/workstations at the workplace and use Microsoft Windows at home. Over the past few years, there has been significant developments in the Linux arena; Flashy Desktops like GNOME and KDE have emerged, which have brought Linux closer to Windows as the platform of choice, even for the home users. The difference between Windows and Linux was largely from the fact that Linux, or UNIX at large, was regarded as a platform for the “geeks”.

This has however changed over the past few years, with several applications being developed, both for Windows as well as Linux operating systems. However, there are still several people, who are comfortable with Windows as a platform and appreciate its features and capabilities. The traditional home user had to practically purchase the software applications, for word processing, image processing, etc. and the cost of the software exceeded the cost of the entire infrastructure. This was one of the main motivators for Linux platform to gain popularity among the home users. There are still several people out there, who wish to use Windows as their preferred operating system, but would like to cut down or completely eliminate the need to pay for the other software applications. In this article, we shall address this audience and I shall provide you with a few sample applications that a normal home user may wish to use and which are completely free.

A few years back, the business model was based on product, where the revenue was derived from selling software licenses. However, this is a one-time earning. The scenario has changed over the years. Software development is no longer about developing and selling military/ consumer applications from scratch. Its evolved to be much more than that. Software development has moved to integrating different services to a cohesive whole which then implements your business/personal needs. With that, the value addition comes from “software services”. Software services is where concerns could reap their profits, in addition to the mainstream software sales. This should not be a surprise, as the products to evolve to address the developments in business. With globalization being the trend of the day, the product has to keep evolving to stay in the market place. And with additions to the product, the services also need to be revamped, creating new areas of business and consulting. This works perfectly well in a corporate setting, where the changes in the business needs far reflects on the IT infrastructure, which evolves with the business. However, the normal home user’s needs do not usually evolve at this pace. The home users often are happy to use products, which they are comfortable using or have used already and are familiar with. This is why the home users still prefer Windows to Linux desktops, though Linux desktops are cheaper than their counterpart.

Microsoft is still regarded as a “closed source” platform for which one has to shell out money by way of software purchases. The difference between Linux and Microsoft computers, in the market, is also large. As a matter of fact, several companies offer pre-installed Windows versions on the notebooks and work stations. And not everybody is computer savvy. Several people I’ve met are typical home users, and the computer is a tool to communicate or for low end usage such as writing letters and documents or processing the fotos from the vacation. This is also a selling point for the Linux gurus, who argue on the lack of free software for Windows. This argument would have been valid a few years back, when the Open Source community was still small. However, now a days, there are several Universities, companies and research institutes moving their business into mainstream Open Source. Going open source has open up a new means to do business, of which we are gaining the community support and engagement, which would accompany us a long way into the future. That way, an ecosystem is created, which produce components that supplement your product. Along these lines, one could find almost all the applications for Linux as well as Windows. So, the argument that one needs to pay “big bucks” for the software has been deemed invalid.

Coming back to my original claim, with open source, the product development is no longer an issue. The quality of the software is better and the modifications to source, meaning feature additions, deletions or improvements to the developmental code, are mostly integrated back by the community into the mainstream product at various releases or versions of the software product. There are several software applications for Windows that I use, which are open source. One also has to analyze one’s needs, before one could make claims regarding the availability of software. For instance, a company secretary may be interested in Word processing application, whilst a software developer may be interested in compilers, IDEs and the like. Addressing the individual needs is the main point that one should consider when arguing for/against open source applications. Towards this, I shall point out a few free/open source software applications that I currently use.

1. Notepad++ : A better notepad with syntax highlighting and support for programming languages

2. Freemind : Mind mapping software

3. Paint. NET : A better paint application

4. GIMP : An alternative to Adobe Photoshop

5. Open/Star Office : An alternative to MS-Office.

6. Firefox : An alternative to Internet Explorer.

7. Thunderbird : A snappy e. mail client. An alternative to MS-Outlook or other proprietary e. mail clients

8. iTunes : An audio player

9. Audacity : An audio processing application

10. Jahshaka : A video processing application

11. VLC Player : A comprehensive video player application

12. RSS Reader : A news reader application

13. Webshots : An application to process your photos to a nice looking desktop

14. OpenWorkbench : A free project management application

15. FileZilla : A good FTP client to transfer files between clients

16. NetBeans : A great IDE to develop Java applications. Support extends to other programming languages too.

17. XAMPP : An integrated Apache, MySQL, PhP and PERL stack for web servers.

18. Scribus : Desktop publishing in PDF, PS and several other formats

19. Juice : Listen to and collect interesting podcasts. A supplement to iTunes.

20. Blender : 3D modeling and animation toolkit. I use this very occasionally.

21. World Wind : A product, similar to Google Earth, from NASA.

22. CCleaner : A system cleaning utility

These are a few applications that I have on my Windows notebook. The only problem is that one has to spend time researching the suitable Open Source applications. A software engineer by profession, I am strongly against pirated software. The thought of paying for the software I use occasionally or never is another driver behind using such open source products. Software, though its virtual and cannot be seen or touched physically, is pretty much like any other Engineering product like a dam or a bridge, calling for talent, engagement, commitment, time and much more to produce. So, the presence of such open source applications allows you to either “buy” the software that you want or look for the open source alternative. Additionally, these efforts are all community driven. you may contribute to these communities, either with your free-time by means such as blogging, e. mail advertising, marketing, recommending these products to friends and family, etc or by making small monetary contributions.

Before I go into explaining to you how good an open source POS software is I would like to tell you why it’s so important to have a POS software in your company. POS software is going to one of the most important pieces of software that you have in your business, because it can actually increase your profits. Sounds crazy, but it’s true. Using a POS software will help reduce pricing errors, reduce employee theft, keep inventory cost down and it will even print out reports on demand for all of the listed items.

Now that you can see why it’s so important to implement a POS software system into your business, no matter what type of business you have, I want to talk to you about using an open source POS software. Open source POS software will not cost you a single penny or it will be extremely cheap, so it’s very tempting to want to download it. But stop right there, often times you get what you pay for.

Open source POS software doesn’t always have every feature in it that your company may need. It’s those functions that you are going to need to purchase in order to even use the open source POS software. This can end up costing much more then you ever expected. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.

Your business is at stake here. If you are planning on using an open source pos software system you will quickly find that they are extremely limited. They are basic pieces of software that will do no more then keep track of your cash transactions. But what about everything else that they are suppose to do, like keep track of your inventory trends so you don’t overstock, and record employee theft.

POS software is important and this is not an area to skimp out on. Your POS software system needs to be effective so that it can help to increase your profits. Remember you are investing in your business and it’s worth spending a couple of hundred dollars to have the opportunity to save yourself from overstocking of your stock room or prevent your employees for stealing your merchandise. And let me not forget to mention that if you use an open source pos software you will not have any type of customer support, so you will be completely on your own when using the software.

Traffic translates as visitors, visitors mean sales and of course sales bring money. This is the target behind it all, money. Of course that all you create must be with passion and shouldn’t pressure you like a school assignment, for example. If you’re planning to start an online business, you should spend the biggest part of your time creating business assets and a little less to worry about on what platform your business will be operated on.

A big part of business owners finally choose closed source administration systems but, even if nothing is wrong with this approach, you might be able to get even more worth with a open source solution (and with the community’s support also). These days there are a lot of open source CMS solutions around and here are a few of them:

* Joomla!: Has been designated in 2009 the most popular open source content management system on the web and that’s because it features lots of plug-ins, widgets and even templates.
* Wordpress: Also does not need any introduction. Millions of sites on the web make use of it’s services. Has surpassed others and has become the most popular CMS in use today.
* Drupal: Is also a popular and powerful content management system. It allows easy management, organization and content publishing on a website and has been growing since its release back in 2001.
* SMF: Even if it’s not as renowned as vBulletin or PhpBB, it still is one of the most secure forum software available. As a serious online business also needs a forum for support and not only, it’s a good solution since it implements easily and it’s SEO friendly.

There are others as well but the most important thing about all of them isn’t that they all are free. That’s actually because they’re powerful open source CMS solutions and also have a pretty large community behind and that’s always a good indicator for reliability.

For easy money a content management system is the type of site you shall use and that’s why you have more control over the changes and updates, add quickly features (at low development costs) and also have an interactive and accessible website.

Open source software has taken the marketplace by storm. Small business owners and multinational companies alike are using open source software to run their daily business operations. Today, open source software can meet the needs of various industries and market segments including those requiring an application server, web server, productivity suite, CRM tool, project management, integrated development environment (IDE), point-of-sale software, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and ecommerce shopping cart software just to name a few.

Community developed software provides a low cost alternative to traditional proprietary software. Merchants have the ability to customize community based products to meet their specific business requirement. When trying to select a shopping cart system, to run your online store, business owners must evaluate and assign value to the technical and operational specifications before deploying to production. Since one size does not fit all; merchants must choose the best product based on their unique requirements.

So how do you choose the best open source shopping cart software? First we’ll start by listing the major players in the small business market. In order to make my list the open source shopping cart must meet the 10 minimum requirements listed below.

Required Features:

1. Centrally controlled source code
2. An active developer community
3. Mature third party extensions (including PCI Compliant payment gateway extensions)
4. Support Linux and Microsoft Windows hosting environments
5. Software download must include all features listed on website (e.g. not crippleware or demoware)
6. Well written installation guide and user guide. Documentation may be available as a PDF document or as an HTML file.
7. Installs on a standard SSL certificate
8. Provides a custom notification email to the merchant and customer
9. Provides timely bug fixes and safe upgrade path
10. Installs in a dedicated and shared hosting environment

Now that we have our minimum requirements list we can begin to look at the top free shopping cart programs. In my opinion, the top free shopping carts for the small business market are:

• Magento Commerce
• VirtueMart
• osCommerce
• ZenCart
• CubeCart
• UberCart
• AbleCommerce

All of the free shopping carts listed above can be downloaded, installed and configured at no cost to the merchant. However, since most community based product installations come with a standard (non commercial quality) user interface most merchants will want to upgrade the GUI (graphical user interface). In order to upgrade the GUI and improve the end user experience merchants can choose to hire a web developer or simply purchase a custom template from sites like templatemonster. Template Monster (and others) provides thousands of affordable custom templates so merchants can easily deploy great looking online stores.

In order to ensure you’re selecting the best shopping cart for your business merchants should consider the following:

Capacity – The merchant must know and understand the product capacity limitation. For example, if you have a product catalog of 1000 products but the shopping cart has a 900 product limitation then that solution is not for you. Note: All of the open source products listed above have an unlimited product catalog.

Performance – If your ecommerce web store is slow customers will simply shop someplace else. Therefore, you must check performance with high user loads and with increased data loads. Both scenarios can bring a web store to its knees.

Community Support – Verify a strong development community exist. Review the online forums to see if the product has an active community of developers. Look for online questions then see how long it took for the user to get a response.

Technical Support – Ensure technical support is available via an active developer community or as a fee paid contract. There is nothing worse than having a production issue and waiting 5 days or more to get an answer.

Payment Gateway Support – In order to accept and process credit card payments the open source shopping cart must provide third party payment gateway extensions. The leading payment gateway services provide secure payment modules for many open source shopping cart programs.

Search Engine Friendly URL – Once you deploy your ecommerce web store you must submit your web store to the top search engines. In order to be indexed by the search engines your online store must have search engine friendly URLs.

The Content management system is a web application that is intended to make content writing and delivery easier. In recent times, open-source Content Management Systems have been seen as an increasingly mainstream part of the market. It enables the users to build and deploy content easier, faster and more effectively. This in turn helps the web masters to maintain their websites rich in strong content by efficiently streamlining the content in them.

The most significant fact about the Open Source CMS are that they diminish the cost of maintaining a website and enable webmasters to manage their own content. Open Source Content management Systems have now matured to the point where they should be considered side by side with commercial alternative. If you are looking for a way to control and manage your website content easily, the content management systems are an effective administrative tool.

Open-source CMS are typically developed using open tools, such as PHP, Perl, Python, Java and UNIX. Working in these environments reduces ‘lock-in’ with specific vendors or software packages.

Salient Features of Open Source CMS
• Minimal cost
• Extensive documentation
• Easy Customization
• Number of plug-ins developed
• Constant upgrades
• Timely improvisations
• Healthy User Community for discussion
• Additional capabilities such as SEO
• RSS Feeds integration
• Twitter and Facebook integration
• Quick search
• Rapid Problem Solver
• Easy maintenance

Most Favorite Open Source Content Management Systems

Drupal Content Management Systems – Drupal is an easy and widely accepted Content Management System, which enables the webmasters to build up an interactive community that helps to promote your services and products easily. Drupal development services includes a wide range of operations like template development , custom design, design Integration, custom theme development, custom modules development, Drupal migration, blocks development and Drupal websites maintenance. The most important part of the Drupal development services is that it meets almost all customized specifications of the client.

Joomla Content Management Systems – Joomla is one of the most popular and widely admired content management system. The most notable point of the Joomla services is that the Joomla empowers a wide range of applications – starting from simple web pages for personal use to high profile professional websites. Other noteworthy Joomla services are template customization, Joomla custom modules development, Joomla custom components development, Joomla design integration, Joomla module installation, custom modification and customization etc.

DotNetNuke Content Management Systems – DotNetNuke CMS is a open source web application that has been developed in VB.NET for the ASP.NET framework. DotNetNuke is another most reliable and effective CMS that can produce websites and blogs with exceptional look and feel. The service is an ultimate package of Data management and storage, data security, business process integration, 3rd party application integration, extensive QA testing, production deployment, Dot Net Nuke Consulting and many more.

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