Frequently Asked Questions

Click on the links provided below for answers to frequently asked questions concerning Open-Source Software.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
::	What is Open-Source Software?
::	What are the benefits of Open-Source Software?

What is...?
::	Linux	::	Sendmail
::	GNU	::	Apache
::	PERL	::	BIND
::	Samba	::	BSD/OS, FreeBSD, Net BSD, OpenBSD
::	Beowulf

What is Open-Source Software?

Open-source refers to software whose license requires that its software code be open, extensible and freely distributable. It also allows for collaborative development, which refers to the worldwide community of software developers participating in a continuous cycle of development, review and testing over the Internet.

[ top ]

What are the benefits of Open-Source Software?

With open-source, the user is in control. Access to the source code makes software easy to configure to specific user needs. Because open-source is freely distributed, it can greatly reduce the user's total cost of computing. Open-source software is reliable, stable, scalable, secure and extremely cost-effective.
Use of Open-Source Software in the Marketplace

Presently, open-source systems power the Internet
:: 30% of Internet servers run Linux
:: 40% of email servers run Sendmail
:: 65% of Web servers run Apache
:: 90% of DNS servers run BIND

[ top ]

Examples of Open-Source Software

As a collective term, many mission critical programs and applications come under the term Open-Source Software. There are countless open-source programs and applications. Some of the most well known include:

Linux - The Linux "kernel" combined with other open-source applications, composes what is commonly known as the Linux Operating System (OS). The Linux OS is similar in nature to those offered by Microsoft, Novell and Sun Microsystems. Linux has been embraced by the corporate IT industry and is offered, pre-installed, by hardware manufacturers including IBM, Compaq, HP and Dell. Linux can be downloaded for free from the Internet, or a "distribution" can be purchased from many vendors such as Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, Turbolinux or Debian.

[ top ]

Sendmail - Is a free/open-source program that is responsible for routing approximately 40% of the email that travels over the Internet.
The Sendmail Consortium

[ top ]

GNU - Fundamentally the predecessor of Linux. GNU is a free version of UNIX created by Richard Stallman in 1984. Stallman was the impetus for the General Public License (GPL), the legal documentation/copyright that secures the "openness" of open-source software. Stallman also founded the Free Software Foundation, a non-profit entity that serves as host for GPL'd materials.

[ top ]

Apache - Apache is a free/open-source program from which more than half of the sites on the Internet are built and operated.
The Apache Software Foundation.

[ top ]

PERL - Is a "Practical Extraction and Report Language" freely available for UNIX, MS/DOS, Macintosh, OS/2, Linux and other operating systems. Perl has powerful text-manipulation functions. It eclectically combines the features and purposes of many command languages and is used extensively for programming World Wide Web electronic forms and generally used as the glue and gateway between systems, databases and users.
The Perl Mongers advocacy website

[ top ]

BIND - "Berkley Internet Name Domain" is a free/open-source program that allows Internet domain names to be entered as text-based names instead of an IP Address, or series of numbers, making it easier for people to interact on the Internet.
The Internet Software Consortium

[ top ]

Samba - Is a free/open-source suite of application services by which many PC-related machines can share files and printers and other information such as lists of available files and printers. Operating systems that support Samba natively include Windows NT, OS/2, and Linux and add on packages that achieve the same thing are available for DOS, Windows, VMS, UNIX of all kinds, MVS and more. Samba enables people to integrate their Microsoft or IBM style desktop machines with their UNIX or Linux servers. For many networks, Samba provides a complete replacement for Windows NT or other network servers.
Samba

[ top ]

BSD/OS, FreeBSD, Net BSD, OpenBSD - The BSD(Berkeley Software Design) family of operating systems are UNIX-based, free/open-source operating systems, similar to Linux. Initially developed at the University of California-Berkeley in the 1970s, BSD is considered one of the most secure and stable OS s and serves as a platform for a large percentage of Internet service providers. Several companies that utilize BSD include Yahoo, UUNET, Mindspring and Compuserve. Ironically, Microsoft's free email service Hotmail began its life on BSD servers, and Apple recently announced its next operating system will be based on BSD.

[ top ]

Beowulf - Beowulf, or the Beowulf Project, is a method of connecting a series, or cluster, of computers, or nodes, together via Ethernet. By linking, or clustering, the computers and utilizing the free/open-source Beowulf software, the collective computing capacity increases exponentially. The High Performance Computer (HPC) community now refers to these machines as "Beowulf Class Cluster Computers." In essence, the Beowulf cluster is now recognized as a "super-computer" genre within the HPC community. Since a Beowulf cluster can be developed from common, off-the-shelf computers utilizing free/open-source software, a Beowulf Cluster "super-computer" can be built and implemented at a fraction of the cost of other systems of similar computing capacity.

[ top ]