"Independence by Open Source Software"

Are you independent from your software supplier because you use Open Source Software?

Independence is a great thing. Nevertheless, many companies and organizations still choose software solutions that makes them become dependent on some supplier. For any software adjustments or data export they are dependent on a supplier.

Fortunately, there are two trends in recent times are increasingly popular: "open standards" and "open source". db8 is much in favor of open standards and open source.

Open standards

With open standards, the specifications are publicly available. If your software uses open standards, your data is interchangeable between the different types of software. In other words, you can choose what software you use to edit your data. As you are less dependent on a certain software. You can export your data and use other software packages to use it.

Open source

Open Source Software goes one step further. Open Source Software (OSS, also known as FLOSS) is software whose license allows for almost unlimited use, modifications and distribution. The source (or business logic) of the software is public to their owners. If you are not satisfied with the operation of the software, then you can choose a service that your software to measure changes.

Open Source Software is not the same as free software: sometimes there is a fee for the software or services requested. Depending on the software license is free to modify and distribute.

The opposite of Open Source Software is closed software, or proprietary software. In such software, the supplier of technical and legal constraints placed for the use, modification, copying or redistribution.

An example of closed software is Microsoft Word. You can use this software to create and modify documents. But if you want to change the functionality of the program (eg you want the menu option "File> New ..." changed to "File> New Document ..."), then you are dependent on one vendor: Microsoft. The source code is not public and even if you can find someone who could do some adjustments, then the software license forbids it...

Community

Open Source Software is being developed by commercial companies, independent developers or by a combination of both. A well-run Open Source software package will have a community of users who develop the package and other users help with the software.

Because the code is public, programmers can understand the code. Their solutions can be shared with others. Thus, errors in the software fixes and security of the system improved.

Furthermore, in the Joomla community extensions are being developed to extend the default functionality of a Joomla site.

db8 uses Open Source Software and supports open standards, is active as a volunteer in several open source communities and developed some Joomla extensions which are free download on this website.