The term “FOSS” is in many individual’s, organisation’s vocabulary these days. Those who are in need of “License Free” solutions are digging in to FOSS as much as possible. Academics those who are interested in knowing how a particular software works, always stick with FOSS. What is this FOSS?

Free and Open Source Software is a software category that offers many freedoms to the computer user. The term “Free” is referred to “Freedom” not “Zero cost”. If some one want to make money from FOSS there is a business model for that too. Mr. Richard M. Stallman is the initiator of Free Software movement and he founded the Free Software foundation to keep the software freedom going on so that the future generation also can benefit from it.

The essential 4 freedoms in FOSS.

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

This concept is being accepted by many people around the world and there are hundreds of thousands of users and Developers which contribute to FOSS in many ways. I would like to list down couple of famous FOSS applications that are used by today’s world.

• GNU/Linux Operating system
• Apache web server
• Postfix mail server
• Open Office, office suite
• Firefox Web browser
• Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Client
• GIMP image manipulation system
• Empathy instant messenger

There are over 60,000 software available for you to use in the category of FOSS. You can use, study, customize, share the software and that gives the real freedom to the computer user where they have the transparency and control over the software. FOSS is secure as it’s open. Most of the software is being developed according to the standards. Since the community input is very high, identifying and patching the software bugs is being done more often. Most of the free software developers are volunteers and they do it because they love it. We’ll go deeper in to the FOSS world with future articles on this topic.

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