Libre Revolutions - Open software for the business community

[james.hill]

Hi all,

My mission is to bring open source software to the business world. Crazy I hear you say? I hear cries at the back "not ready for primetime!".

Well, I'll let you in on a little secret. We all use open and free software almost every day. The forum you're reading this post on is powered by open software, the web server that the forum runs on is free software too. How many of you use google? You guessed it, google is based on free software (and has strong free software links too). Closer to home are people using the web browser firefox (www.getfirefox.com), or the email client thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/).

I want to bring the advantages of free/libre/open software to the business world, and I believe that this is the time to do it. My company provides strategy, support, installation, and development of open software. We aim to provide the professional backup that much of the free software movement is currently lacking.

I hope to be able to help some of you with choosing/using this software, and I'll be posting an offer for some CRM software in the offers section 'soon'. If anyone has any questions about free software, or is looking for some reliable cost effective software for their business, please drop me a line.

We're located in Greater Manchester.

Cheers,

James

[Jayne]

Hi James,

Welcome to the forum, great site :D

Best Wishes

Jayne

[Cornish Steve]

A few months ago, I was made aware of an open source equivalent to Microsoft Office. How many people are aware of Open Office software? It can be downloaded from www.openoffice.org.

When we first started our interactive online courses, we required participants to use Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This proved awkward (and expensive) for some, especially for Apple users. More recently, we have advised people to use Open Office as an inexpensive alternative. While not perfect, the software seems to work well. Most importantly, files created using Open Office can be read by Microsoft Office applications.

[james.hill]

Thank you Jayne for your kind words =]. I'm hoping the site will look much better when I have smiling pictures of dynamic people doing technical things. heheheh.

A few months ago, I was made aware of an open source equivalent to Microsoft Office. How many people are aware of Open Office software? It can be downloaded from www.openoffice.org.

When we first started our interactive online courses, we required participants to use Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This proved awkward (and expensive) for some, especially for Apple users. More recently, we have advised people to use Open Office as an inexpensive alternative. While not perfect, the software seems to work well. Most importantly, files created using Open Office can be read by Microsoft Office applications.

Goldctrsteve: This is exactly the sort of thing we help with! My favourite feature of OpenOffice is how easy it is to make .pdf files - simply click on File -> export as PDF. Sounds as though I'll have to create a poll (once I've stored up enough karma) to find out how many of you are already using this software, and who, and why.

[Richard Conyard]

I might have missed the point here, but what is the big deal?

[james.hill]

I might have missed the point here, but what is the big deal?

There is no "big deal". Open source software has been around for a while, and has been used in businesses in certain sectors for years. I'm here as I figure that this type of software is now ready for the more general business community.

I don't believe that it's better for everyone. I certainly use it almost exclusively myself, but that's due to my personal tastes and experiences. What I'm offering is an alternative that will be better suited to some people who may not even be aware it exists, and providing the professional support needed by small/medium business.

Having said that, the Times Education Supplement certainly thought open software a big enough deal to be worth a full front page spread a couple of months ago ;-).

[Richard Conyard]

I guess it's it all a question of tastes and what users require.

Star / Open office is a good package and offering, but until it can support VBA and the office object model I can't see any serious users wanting to take it up.

For letters etc. which I grant is about 95% of what MS-Office is normally used for it's a free alternative. And I guess if people are going to pay to have MS Office maintained then they might as well pay to have Open Office maintained

[Sapphire-Limited]

Hi James,

I'm in agreement with your philosophy.

Open Source Software is definately a major player in the business world.
As you mention: Many commercial applications actually have open source roots.

My argument for the open source movement is that so many applications don't 'fall over' as much as their costly alternatives. I find Open Source offerings to be highly reliable.

I also find each application has a lively support forum with all users keen to take part and help one another for free.

This combined with nightly updates, bug fixes and patches by those in the community who are so keen to see the application succeed amounts to great value for ones time invested to research and deploy.

I often recommend software packages (commercial and open source) to our clients and to know you are out there with support is very useful indeed.

We do of course have to run all the major commercial applications in our offices so when our customers need a demonstration of our machines capabilities then they will feel at home with whichever software they are used to.

Then when our customers say their commercial software is great BUT it doesn't do 'x' then we always know of an Open Source alternative which we can freely modify to suit our customers needs - The customer might have been waiting a year or more for the next release of their locked commercial offering (and they would have to pay more again) - with open source things can be changed rapidly to suit.

I could rattle on for ages as I am very keen indeed!

Good Luck
Best regards
Gareth
Sapphire Document Solutions Limited

[james.hill]

Hi Gareth,

Those are all good points =]. I don't suppose you could let me know the software packages you find useful in case I missed a few? I guess you'd use printing systems such as cups and utilities such as ps2pdf?

If you ever need help with a reccomendation or troubleshooting, please do get in touch.

Cheers,

James

[Ozzy]

Hello James,
I am also a strong supporter of Open Source, in fact I am typing this reply using Firefox on a Mandrake Linux operating system running KDE x-window manager. I've been using LInux as my OS of choice from some 6 years, and even my core business operates using open source applications such as Open Xchange for groupware, and bespoke applications on Perl, MySQL, etc.

The more people realise the benefit and potential of open source applications the better choice they have in their every day business activities.

Welcome to the forums!

[MichaelG]

A big fan of open source here - in fact I have written a few myself. I learn a lot from the open source community and give back by writing applications and giving it free.

So if you need any help - get in touch.

[james.hill]

Ozzy: Good to see another fan =D. You raise a good point about the provision of *choice* rather than another monopoly. Thanks for welcoming me here.

MichaelG: I took a look at your site, and must say I love your business philosophy. It is the standard I aspire to!