The Advantages of using Free Software instead of Proprietary one. ================================================================= In the 21 century Computer Software is one of the basic things, both people and companies need for their modern daily life and work. Everyday tens of thousands of companies buy and use software for their work environment. Everywhere starting from the internet servers to the desktop computers we need software to process our daily tasks. That's why software spendings are very fundamental nowheredays for each Small, Middle and Big company. Reducing software costs gives the possibility to companies to save money ready for investment in their output products instead of spending on software. There are few Commercial Companies from which we can buy the software we use for everyday purposes. Such are companies like Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Sun Microsystems etc. This companies produce a software which is proprietary. If we want to embed this software into our firm infra structure, we need to pay to the company for their software product and agree to the End User License Agreement (EULA). Luckily companies have other solution alternatives in the face of a branch of software which is called "Free Software". What is Free Software? Free software is a software developed by people all over the world licensed under a specific License Agreement Called the GNU GPL. This license allow us freely to use/distribute/change every software licensed under the GPL license. Based on that license a millions of computer experts, enthuiasts and students joined together around the free software philosophy, and created a product which is free for use and distribute. This product's name is GNU Linux. GNU Linux is the main competitor of the commercial software solutions for the business and in the server markets. Embedding Free Software into our future company give us great opportunities to reduce our software costs, and give us more robust and stable platform than most of the commercial Software Solutions like for example the Microsoft Windows Computer Operating System. When using GNU Linux you also save time for problem solving, statistics show that it is less likely to experience problems when using Free Software instead of Proprietary software. Using Free Software provides you with better security "No Viruses" for GNU Linux. For more information about free software The GNU Free the audience can take a look at the Free Software Foundation website http://fsf.org Free Software SWOT Analysis - Strenghts * Free to use, sell or resale * Open structure of the software ( Gives us the possibility to easily customize or make changes in the software ) * Better Security (because of the open structure of the software the security could be observed by anyone) * More Rapid development * Usually Not affected by Viruses, SpyWare * Everybody able to participate to it * Free of Charge - Weaknesses * Comes with absolutely no guarantees ( Which is valid also for most of the proprietary software vendors too ) * Usually maintanence takes more human resources As you can see There are so many Strenghts and only few Weaknesses. Which in our opinion is a good ground for future widely adoption of free software products into the companies. Free Software saving examples. As example if we have a small firm with 10 computers, all the computers will need a software solution to work. Let's say the firm's main need is text processing using Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. To run this so famious programs we'll need also the proprietary Microsoft Operating System "Microsoft Windows". 1 License Agreement for a 1 Windows Computer 224 $, The Microsoft Office Package costs 493$. This means only the software for the computer equipment in the firm will cost 7170$. As an alternative if we choose to use the Free Software and GNU Linux Operating System instead of Microsoft Windows. The software comes free, the only thing we had to pay is for support. We could perfectly avoid this tremedous sum and choose to use Free Software like Fedora http://fedora.redhat.com for our firm Hire a professional Linux Expert for installation and support of the software. For the sum of 1000$. As you can see from this simple example using Free Software technology we are able to save big amounts of money in our case 6170$. From economic point of view this money are a profit for our firm, a fresh money we could invest in buying a new computers for the office, or improve the firm technological infrastructure. Famous Companies using Free Software solutions. Very good example for adopting free software in the big business is the Google Corporation. Google are one of the biggest search engines on the net their services are based on Free Software Solution, the cost reduces because of using the free software as a base they were able to elevate their business which is one of the most profitable on earth. They achieved this for only 12 years. Nowheredays Google seems to be the best search engine available on the internet and to provide the internet users and advirtesers with the best solution. Another very famous service on the Internet the Yahoo Free Mail Service is Being served by again by very famous Free Software based operating system named FreeBSD. Free Software usage is increasing per daily basis companies like Redhat make big profits of selling free software for servers http://www.redhat.com/ Liberty of Society The liberty of modern day society is question of general importance. Into a Hi-tech computerized world it is extremely dangerous to use a software which program code is completely hidden from the public. The Domination of the proprietary software nowheredays gives the possibility to companies like Microsoft to be Monopolize the business and lets the end user/companies without alternative choices. The software production becomes more and more centralized, the bigger commercial software companies buy the smaller one until maybe one day one will rule them all. This is extremely bad for the development of a Free Market, a market on which basis the modern economy operates, in the software market. The security thread is also very serious. Software program code of the proprietary operating system may contain spying features, and you as a user may be possibly sniffed by the software producing company. Defending our security and freedoms of us like citizens of the Earth is very important. The Free Software does not have a specific owner, the using community is the owner, all created and registered under the GPL Free Software License is freely available for everybody to study it, something you cannot do with any Non-free or proprietary software.