What is open source software?
Open-source software is computer software that is distributed along with its source code, a code which is used to create the software under a special software license. The license allowed the copyright holder to provide the right to study, change and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose either before or after it has been modified.
In your opinion, why people prefer open source software over
proprietary alternatives nowadays?
The
advantages of open source are the low costs, the freedom to modify the
software, open standards that support collaborative development, and freedom to
upgrade as needed. People have their rights to control the software's
code. Open Source software provides further flexibility through freedom from a
single vendor and freedom to modify the software. Besides, there are no license
fees for an open source software, reducing annual license fees cost to zero,
free of royalties and fees, and commonly
it is known as free software.
Name top (fives) 5 most popular open source software and
compare them with similar proprietary software (e.g. Open Office versus
Microsoft Office).
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Open Source Software
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Proprietary Software
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Firefox:
It offers features such as tabbed browsing, incremental find, spell
checking, live bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, and
location-aware browsing. It is also an exceptional product that expands its
use with add-ons created by avid users. We can choose from over a thousand
add-ons to personalize and make it our own.
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Internet Explorer:
It only works with Windows and not compatible with other operating
systems. IE systems are slow when it comes to rendering pages and it has been
a constant target for malicious coders and lacks in security. The newest
version of IE 9 offers features such as faster responses, tracking
protection, pinned site for favourite sites, location capabilities, one
search box and more viewing spaces.
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VLC:
VLC is a powerful open source application that can play numerous
video and audio formats with no codec packs required and can also do media
conversion and streaming. VLC supports practically every audio/video codec
and file format. The most recent VLC release also offers live recording of
streaming video, frame-by-frame advancement and superb speed controls.
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Windows Media Player:
It comes with Windows operating systems and it offers intuitive
navigation of the audio and video library. However, it often does not stream
video properly, especially over slow DSL connections and it is limited as to
which portable devices it can sync to.
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Pidgin:
Pidgin is a multiprotocol Instant Messaging client that allows us to
use all of our IM accounts at once. (AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk,
Grouowise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo!, Zephyr).
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Google Talk:
Google Talk is an Instant Messaging service, which is integrated with
Gmail or available as a separate download. It is a functional app needed when
it comes to staying in contact with our Gmail friends.
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Thunderbird:
It can help us to better manage our unruly inbox, scales to the most
sophisticated organizational needs while making it easy to find what we need.
It is more flexible, contains vast collection of themes and extensions
available, and it provides security protection firewalls, spam filters and
anti virus properties.
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Microsoft Outlook:
It does not allow us to create folders, flags, or rules that learn by
example. It lacks of useful message templates, not flexible and does not give
a choice to anti-spam engine full of security features.
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Winpooch:
It is an open source protection from spyware and the like. By
scanning files in real-time on our computer, it detects malware and makes
sure they do not infiltrate our system. It also sees and prevents all attacks
from viruses, spyware, trojan programs and others.
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Kaspersky Anti-virus Personal:
It is well known for its outstanding detection rates. It commits to
multiple tasks as it protects against viruses, script viruses, checks file
archives and removes viruses from mail.
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