The Open Source Alternative

It's been a while since we last posted and, to continue but develop the current theme, we thought we'd move away from Linux a little and address the fundamental ethos behind this alternative operating system.

Open source software is exactly what it implies; the source code that makes it work is freely available to download, review, tweak or adapt, and pass on, subject to the terms of the licence agreement. Most such software is written and distributed under the GNU Public Licence (GPL) which is a universally accepted licence agreement for the development, amendment and distribution of open source software.

Linux is open source but not all open source is Linux, or even even Linux-compatible. It need not even be an operating system. The chances are that you're already aware of, and perhaps even using, open source software already - there are open source equivalents of Microsoft's favourites which are designed to run on Windows and address some of the perceived failings of Redmond's software development.

Arguably the most widely known suite of open source software, although many people don't perhaps actually know that it is open source, is the Mozilla internet suite; commonly referred to as Firefox (web browser) and Thunderbird (email client). Following wide-spread condemnation of the inherent security flaws in Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, or more importantly, the lack of speed exercised by Redmond in addressing substantiated vulnerabilities, Firefox and it's sister product Thunderbird quickly seized a sizeable chunk of the market share, outstripping longer established alternatives.

Firefox and Thunderbird are no less prone to bugs and/or vulnerabilities but, and herein lies perhaps the most convincing argument for using open source software, they are fixed rapidly by the developers, often before the bug/vulnerability is even widely publicised - they don't wait until the monthly patch download. It's that, and the dynamic development of extensions, themes and plug-ins by third party developers that appears to have made Mozilla so popular.

Another very convincing argument for open source software is its very nature; the code is freely available and therefore it's very difficult to hide malicious code snippets in it. Something that appears to be far more prevalent in the open source than in the proprietary world is the validation of downloads using an MD5Sum. This is a simple validity check, but not infallible. If a download fails the MD5Sum check, it's usually either corrupt or tampered with and shouldn't be loaded either way.

A lesser known but equally useful open source software suite is Open Office, the free version of Sun's Star Office, cited as the main rival to Microsoft Office. Being perfectly honest, and a Power User of Microsoft's offering, it has to be said that Open Office is not ready to take on it's rival in a toe-to-toe battle royal; it lacks quite a lot of the more advanced functionality and polish.

That said, Open Office wins over its Microsoft rival on three fronts, at least for the average user:

1. It's free; free to download, free to install on as many machines as you want, free to use
2. It will open the files of it's rival. even though they are proprietary and closed source. It will even produce files of the same format, readable by it's rival
3. It will also produce web pages and PDF (Portable Document Format) files natively, that is without having to buy additional software to do so or clear out pages of redundant code

So, you may not be ready for a whole new operating system but you like the ideas, morals and ethos behind the open source movement. You can download, install and use two suites of programs which cover off the bulk of the average users' needs, without spending an additional penny.

This post has been sparked by a couple of interesting articles posted on the BBC Technology News site, so it would be churlish not to link back to them in order that you can read an alternate viewpoint.

• BBC News Programs Click Getting the most from open source
• BBC News Technology Questions for Microsoft on open formats

More on other open source alternatives next time.

Upgrading Internet Explorer to Version 7

As is often the case, Microsoft release a new version of software under the guise of an update, and then find themselves in the embarrassing position of having to grant users the ability to roll-back that upgrade because it wasn't perhaps as polished as it should have been on release.

The latest version of Internet Explorer, IE7, is one such upgrade. Is it truly an upgrade? Well, visually, it is quite different from IE6, in that you can now have some of the privacy, security and configuration features that users of Firefox and even Avant have taken for granted for ages.

Tabbed browsing, where you can have different web sites open in one window, isn't a new concept, even to Internet Explorer; Avant has had it from the beginning and, ironically, Avant uses the Internet Explorer engine. In this regard, IE7 is just bringing Internet Explorer back up to the same level as all its competitors.

Security and privacy in Internet Explorer have always been concerns, which is why Firefox so rapidly became the next most popular browser on the market. Is this because Internet Explorer is bad? No, it's probably no more vunerable to attack and exploitation than any other browser but it takes Microsoft longer to acknowledge said vulnerabilities, then patch them.

Firefox made security and privacy much more visible to the end-user, allowing you to see what was going on and configure it to stop some or all of it. Sure, it might hamper your browsing experience when compared to Internet Explorer but, once you knew what you were giving up and why, it became an informed decision, not an imposition as with Internet Explorer, which made sweeping assumptions on your behalf.

This short-sighted approach has also been addressed in IE7 which, as previously cited, only brings it into the same league as its rivals and competitors. That said, in typical Microsoft fashion, it does it seamlessly. There is nothing on the market that integrates with Microsoft's operating systems quite like Microsoft's own products.

You can't uninstall Internet Explorer as it's too deeply embedded in the core operating system; you can only elect not to use it, openly. Using something else will use up additional disc space and memory but will likely be more secure in the short term, until Microsoft completes its next round of catch-up.

So, should I upgrade to IE7? At the time of writing, if you exclusively use Internet Explorer and no other browser, yes - definitely and quickly, without a shadow of doubt or hesitation. If you're one of those people who's already migrated or dabbles with a competing browser, then the choice is entirely yours, because you're sufficiently enlightened already to make up your own mind.