Open Source

Open Source

Open Source is a term that refers to the fact that the software's source code is made available to be modified or edited.

Open source software is everywhere. Odds are, you use some of it every day and don't even know it. If you surf the web, odds are, you've used open source software or benefitted from it.

Examples

Linux, BSD

Two UNIX-style operating systems which are designed to run on the Intel processor.

BIND - Berkeley Internet Name Daemon

BIND powers the vast majority of the Domain Name Resolution on the planet and all of the root DNS servers run BIND. Whenever you type in a website name in your browser, the name is translated to an IP address. That translation begins with the root DNS servers, which all run BIND.

Sendmail

The e-mail server that still powers the largest largest percentage of mail servers in the world.

Apache

The web server software that powers the majority of web servers on the planet.

OpenOffice

A complete suite of desktop applications that provide word processing (Writer), spreadsheets (Calc), drawing (Draw), presentation (Impress) and personal database (Base) functionality.

MySQL

The most frequently deployed database server in use behind web servers is MySQL.

Wiki

The software behind Wikipedia is MediaWiki, an open source PHP based CGI application.

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