Name any commercial software product and most likely there exists an open source counterpart. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars for a program that took a company tens of thousands of hours to develop, you could surf the web and download, for free, a program that performs the same functions but was developed as an open source project. Moreover, these programs are not necessarily inferior just because they are free - often, it is hard to determine that the commercial product is any better than the open source product, and, in some case, open source wins.
Here we look at three examples of open source projects and how they compare to equivalent programs developed as proprietary software by companies. These are only three of countless open source projects out there. Other notable examples include BSD UNIX, Sendmail (the main router of e-mail on the Internet), Apple's OSX (soon to be released), BIND (the provider of DNS for the Internet), GIMP (the open source equivalent to Photo Shop), and Star Office (Sun's alternative to Microsoft Office).
Linux is a free UNIX-like operating system (OS) and is the poster boy of the open source movement.
Brief History
Linux
version 0.01 was born in September 1991 from the hands of Linus B. Torvalds,
a Finnish programmer, then 26 years old. Contrary to what some people
might think, Torvalds did not start Linux out of a desire to compete with
Microsoft OSes; he started it because of dissatisfaction with them. Its
boom began somewhere around 1996 and soon spread worldwide. Linux's following
is estimated currently at 20-25 million and is the fastest growing in
relative numbers.
Even though it is free and open-source, Linux is an economic success.
Linux distributors such as Red Hat are profitable
because they sell services on the OS to consumers. Moreover, since any
programmer can post a changed version, the OS evolves quickly - which
guarantees a market for service.
Linux Versus Windows
Can Linux replace Windows? For some people and companies, it already has. According to statistics released by the International Data Corporation in 2001, Linux has become the second-most-popular operating system for servers after Windows NT, accounting for more than 25% of sales of operating software. And that only counts sales-because Linux is open source, it can be downloaded and distributed for free-so the actual number of systems on which Linux is being installed could be much higher.
Why is Linux growing so fast? Because in some ways, Linux is better than Windows NT. According to many sources, Linux is more reliable, more secure, and more powerful than Windows NT. Plus, it is free. Of course, these findings are not undisputed-a study in April 1999 by Mindcraft, Inc. found NT to be significantly faster than Linux as a file server and web server. However, since Microsoft commissioned this study, the conclusions are debatable.
A common misperception, one that makes Windows more attractive than Linux in the minds of many, is that Linux is a cryptic, command-line based operating system. This was true many years ago, but today there are many drag and drop graphical user interfaces (GUIs), such as KDE and GNOME, that are as easy to use as Windows. It is true that Linux highly configurable and malleable, which means that the guts of the system are more exposed to the user. This means that the learning curve of Linux is much steeper than that of Windows, but it also means that an experienced Linux user has much more power of the system than does an experienced Windows user. Additionally, companies such as Red Hat and Mandrake sell packages that greatly simplify the installation of Linux for the novice user.
Another big complaint about Linux is that there are simply not enough applications for it. Microsoft Office, for instance, does not run on Linux. This was a big problem a couple years ago, but the number of applications for Linux is growing rapidly and by now, Linux applications cover almost all application needs. There is also an ongoing project to create a windows emulator called WINE that would allow Windows programs to run on Linux. Though the project is nowhere near completion, results so far are promising.
So back to the question: Can Linux replace Windows? Yes. Whether or not it actually will is another matter.
Apache is an HTTP (Web) server that was developed as an open source project.
Brief History
At
the beginning of 1995, the most popular server on the web was a HTTP daemon
(httpd) developed by the National
Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA). However, many webmasters
had made their own patches and extensions to the httpd, so a group of
these webmasters got together to share their patches and started what
became known as the Apache Group.
Adding patches and bug fixes to the NCSA httpd, the Apache Group released version 0.6.2 (the first official version) of Apache in April 1995, and by December of the same year they had released version 1.0.
As an HTTP web server, Apache is not changing much-the future goals for Apache are to keep it an open source project, adapt to changes in Internet standards, and fix bugs as they are found. However, the Apache Group is quite busy with other projects, many of which include combining the original Apache HTTP server with new technologies, such as Java, Perl, and XML.
Apache versus Everything Else
Today, Apache is the #1 web server on the Internet as has been since mid 1995. According to a study done by Netcraft, more than 50% of web servers run Apache. The next closest competing product is the Microsoft IIS web server, with less than 20% of the market and dropping. Simply put, Apache dominates the market.
The Mozilla browser is an ongoing project that signals the possible future of the open-source movement.
Brief History
Netscape
started the Mozilla project in early 1998, hoping to create a platform-independent
open-source browser. Many analysts judged this to be a counter-move against
Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which was stealing away market from Navigator.
Development was stalled, however, after the company was sold to AOL in November 1998. Netscape Navigator 6.0, which Netscape released in 2000, was based largely on the Mozilla engine, with enhancements by Netscape.
As an open source project, Mozilla continues, with the goal of creating a fully featured, completely open source browser. The current version of Mozilla is 0.8 and version 1.0 will hopefully be ready by the end of this year.
Mozilla versus Internet Explorer
Because Mozilla is not yet fully complete, it is hard to compare it to Microsoft's IE. However, we can compare Netscape 6, which is largely built around Mozilla, to IE 5.5.
Netscape 6 runs on a new HTML rendering engine called Gecko that is much faster than its predecessor in Netscape 4.6. However, according to a study by CNET, Netscape is still slower in loading and in rendering HTML than IE. Also, Netscape has a number of stability problems and crashes much more than IE, though such problems are being fixed through patches.
One thing that Netscape 6 does have over IE is that is fully standards compliant, whereas IE is not. Also, Mozilla was designed from the ground up to be highly portable, and hence can run on many more systems than IE.
Today, IE 5.5 is still the best browser out there.