Open Source Movement Morris Law IT Coordinator Science

Open Source Movement 開放源碼的發展 Morris Law IT Coordinator, Science Faculty March 2005

Course Outline n n n The difference among free software, freeware, shareware and commercial software The free software movement start in 80’ Comparison of open source software and commercial software Demonstration of useful open source software Open source organizations in Hong Kong

Different kinds of software

Important terms in Software n Free Software n n Open Source Software n n A special case of copylefted software Proprietary Software: n n copyrighted with free distribution terms General Public Licensed (GPL) software n n software that is not copyrighted Copylefted software: n n Similar to free software but stressed in source code availability Public domain Software: n n Software that has freedom to use, modify and distribute to others prohibited to use, redistribute and modify. Shareware: n copyrighted software with special distribution and marketing method: try before you buy

What is freeware? n n Software can be freely used and redistributed. (zero price) Freeware often come with no source code. Freeware is not free software in which freedom to modify and improve is the concern. e. g. Acrobat Reader, Power. Archiver, Real Player

Free Software n n n Permission to use, copy, distribute and modified Source code must be available Sometimes called Open Source A matter of liberty, not price Gives freedom to run, study, redistribute and improve the program

Well known free software by category n Operating System Linux (or GNU/Linux) n Free. BSD, Open. BSD, Net. BSD n GNU/Hurd n n General Utilities n GNU Utilities

Well known free software by category n Programming Languages GNU C/C++ n Perl n Python n Tcl n n Windows System The X-Windows System n XFree 86 n

Well known free software by category n Desktop environments GNOME n KDE n GNUStep n XFce n n Web Browser Mozilla (Netscape 6, 7) n Firefox n

Well known free software by category n Productivity and Applications ABIWord n GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) n n Office Suite Open. Office n KOffice n

Well known free software by category n Server-type software n Samba n Apache n Ph. P n Zope n My. SQL n Postgre. SQL

Major Personality in free software community n Richard Stallman, n founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project. Profiled in Steven Levy's 1984 book, Hackers: the Heros of the Computer Revolution as the Last True Hacker, he started the Free Software movement in the 1980 s and is considered by many to be the father of Free Software/Open Source.

Major Personality in free software community Linus Torvalds, initial author and top maintainer of the Linux kernel, and possibly the most respected figure in the community. Larry Wall author of the popular Perl language.

Major Personality in free software community n Eric Raymond n n author of the famous paper The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and responsible for the popularization of the name Open Source Bruce Perens n editor of the Debian Free Software Guidelines and the Open Source Definition, considered by the community as the basic law.

Major Personality in free software community n Alan Cox n n Guido van Rossum n n active contributor and maintainer of the Linux kernel. author of the Python language. Miguel de Icaza n founder of GNOME.

Major organizations for Free Software n n Free Software Foundation Software in the Public Interest and its Debian GNU/Linux and Debian GNU/Hurd projects n Linux International n The Open Source Initiative n The XFree 86 Project n The Free Standards Group, parent of the Linux Standard Base n The Apache Software Foundation n The GNOME Foundation n The KDE League

Major free software sites n Sourceforge. net n n Slashdot. org n n major community and news site with forum Freshmeat. net n n the world largest open source software development web site major software release announcement site Advogato. org n the advocate site for free software developers

Major events in open source n n n Richard Stallman launched the GNU project in 1984 The first web browser mosaic was created in NCSA in 1993 Netscape announce to release it’s source code in 1998. The term ‘open source’ was first used The first Linuxworld trade show in 1999 Major hardware vendors, HP, SGI, IBM has ported and support Linux in their major workstations and server series from 2000 Sun open source its Solaris O. S. in 2004

Recommended freeware on windows http: //www. sci. hkbu. edu. hk/ipo/freeware. html

Reference URLs n Association of Shareware Professionals http: //www. asp-shareware. org n Free Software (Open Source) http: //www. free-soft. org n GNU Project http: //www. gnu. org

Demonstration A PC installed with open source software on both Windows and Linux platform

List of open source / freeware installed n n n Acrobat Reader 7. 0 Apache 2. 0. 53 GIMP 2. 2. 4 JDK 5. 0 My. SQL 4. 1 Firefox 1. 01 Open. Office 1. 1. 3 PHP 4. 3. 7 Putty snapshot 2001 -12 -26 Real Player 10. 5 VNC 3. 3. 7 WINAMP 2. 8

Opensource Organisations in HK n n n Open Standard Support Organisation (OSSO) 開源標準科技協進會 Open Applications Knowledge Association (OAKA) 開放系統研用協會 Hong Kong Linux Users Group (HKLUG) 香港Linux用家協會 Hong Kong Linux Players Group (HKLPG) 香港Linux玩家網 Hong Kong Linux Industry Association (HKLIA) 香港Linux商會