Open source software. Open source software

Open source and free software
07.07.2009 12:25

Among programmers there are people who are ready to provide free of charge the results of their work, along with the opportunity to change and improve them. It's about about manufacturers so-called open source software, which for many years has been the subject of controversy in the global IT community. Some say that open source software is the future, while others, on the contrary, consider it dangerous and unnecessary. But who is right in the end? There is hardly a definitive answer to this question.

So what is open source software? Perhaps the most common definition of this term reveals its main features. Open source software is all open source software, software products based on which are available not only for viewing, but also for modification, which allows you to use already created code to write new versions of software, for bug fixes and improvements to the open source program. It is worth noting that this definition, according to open source supporters, does not fully reflect the very essence of the concept. From their point of view, open source software is, in addition to the source code available for editing, also a whole philosophy, the meaning of which is the creation of an information society through the comprehensive use of open software products in all areas of human activity.

What is the beauty of open source software? According to representatives of this trend, open source software allows:

1. adjust the software product to the requirements of a particular user or group of users;
2. fix the mistakes of previous developers;
3. refine and improve software.

In addition, open source software is mostly free, which is especially attractive to small and medium-sized businesses that, for example, are currently unable to provide themselves with commercial software licenses. Also, supporters of the idea of ​​open source code highlight its security as an advantage, that is, open source software, due to its lack of popularity, is practically not subject to virus attacks. And if a threat is nevertheless detected, then it is eliminated as soon as possible, since, as a rule, a lot of professionals and amateurs who keep in touch with each other have access to the source code. Accordingly, a security threat, having already been detected, is quickly eliminated by one of the community members, or by joint efforts.

It is worth noting that in the global view, open source software includes directly open source software, as well as other types of software products that can be distributed free of charge and provide source code for changes. Such software includes free (freeware) and free (free software) programs.

So, the term open source (open source software) was first used in 1998 by programmers Eric Raymond (Eric Steven Raymond) and Bruce Perens (Bruce Perens). They were sure that the term free software (free software) in English is ambiguous and in some sense can even scare off entrepreneurs who are potential users of such software. Open source is now a trademark of the Open Source Initiative, which distributes open source software. In addition, there is also a special committee that decides whether the license of a particular program can be called open source.

Here it is worth clarifying that most of the open source software is also free. The definitions of open source and free software, while not exactly the same, are broadly similar, and most software licenses fit both.

The difference between open source and free software lies in the priorities. For example, open source advocates emphasize for efficiency work with open source as a method of developing, modernizing and maintaining programs. Proponents of the term "free software" believe that it is the rights to freely distribute, modify and study programs that are the main advantage of free open source software, thereby fixing the authorship of a particular software product.

The founder of the free software concept is the American programmer Richard Matthew Stallman. It was he who first formulated the concept of free software, which reflected the principles of open software development in the scientific community that developed in US universities in the 1970s. Stallman formulated clear criteria for free software. These criteria stipulate the rights that a free software author grants to any user. Thus, using free software, the user gets "four freedoms": run, study, distribute and improve the program.

• "Zero freedom" - the program can be used for any purpose.
• "First freedom" - you can study how the program works and adapt it for your own purposes. The condition for this is the availability of the source code of the program.
• "Second freedom" - you can distribute copies of the program - to help the developer.
• "Third Freedom" - the program can be improved and published its improved version in order to benefit the entire community. The condition for this is also the availability of the source code of the program.

A program that satisfies all these principles can be considered free, that is, guaranteed to be open and accessible to the scientific community and simply to interested people and organizations. It must be emphasized that these principles affect only the availability of programs for general use, criticism and improvement, but do not stipulate related with the spread money relations programs, including do not imply free.

The way free software works is that a software product and its source code are by default protected by copyright, which gives the copyright holder full power to distribute and modify the program, even if the source code is publicly available. That is, the author has the right, including to sell his product. However, once users is not provided the right to obtain the source codes of programs, modify them and distribute further, then the software becomes proprietary - regardless of other conditions.

As for the terms of distribution and use of free software programs, their copying is often prohibited, and reverse engineering, modification, redistribution are stipulated in the license agreement.

However, there are programs that fall, according to some experts, under the definition of open, but are not free. Such programs include, for example, UnRAR, a RAR archive unpacker. The fact is that its source code is in the public domain, but the license prohibits using it to create RAR-compatible archivers.

Of course, the fact that the categories of open source software are different is also important, since they involve different degrees of freedom in relation to user actions. At the same time, one can sometimes observe a significant difference between the definition of free and open source software. Open source software, that is, software with (open) source code (Open Source Software), is a method of software development in which the generated source code of programs is open, that is, publicly available for viewing and modifying. This allows everyone to use the already created code for their own needs and, perhaps, help in the development of an open source program. Free software is the right of the user, but not the obligation of the manufacturer, because The open license does not require that the software is always provided free of charge. However, many of the most successful open source projects are still free.

Open source software is also a key feature of free software, so the later term "Open Source Software" proposed by Eric Raymond seems to some to be even more appropriate for the phenomenon of free software than Stallman proposed in his time " free software.

Note that the benefits of free development for the user should not be exaggerated. Not all free software is equally available for modification by the user, which, on the other hand, has nothing to do with the license to their distribution. An important role is played by the volume of the program: if it contains tens of thousands of lines (as, for example, in OpenOffice.org, an analogue of Microsoft Office), then even a qualified specialist will need quite a lot of time to find and fix the error. count for developers, which will respond to all the comments and suggestions of the user and immediately correct the program, is also impossible, since they do not bear any obligations to the user regarding the quality of the program. In this regard, the user of a proprietary program may be in a better position.

It is worth noting that all participants in the open software process are usually engaged in a particular program out of interest or because this software is a necessary tool for them for any activity. The time spent developing the program not paid therefore, there is no hope that circumstances will not change, and development will not stop altogether. There are cases when the development of the program began thanks to one author-enthusiast who attracted many people to participate in it, then the leader's enthusiasm fades, and with it the software development is suspended. Unfortunately, there are thousands of free programs today that have never been able to reach a full working version. In addition, the program may be necessary, but not of interest, which means that there are no free developers for it.

The place of free software in today's software market is very significant, and many commercial and state businesses use free software directly or indirectly. For example, all Internet users, albeit indirectly, use the free program Bind, which provides a DNS service. In addition, many organizations (in particular, those providing services via the World Wide Web) use the free Apache web server, on the operation of which the profit of the enterprise can directly depend, not to mention servers on the Linux platform.

The benefits of using free and open source software are obvious: you usually don't have to pay for it, and if you do, it costs much less than proprietary counterparts. The main drawback, from a commercial user's point of view, is that free software developers have no obligations other than moral ones. That is, they, in fact, are not responsible for the quality of the software.

For example, in one of the public licenses (GNU) there is even a standard wording that states the absence of warranties: “This program is provided on an “as is” basis. Unless otherwise specified in writing, the author and / or other copyright holder does not accept any warranty obligations, either express or and implied program, including the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, and any other warranties."

By the way, at present the GNU system, more commonly known as GNU/Linux or simply Linux, is quite common, especially in the server market, and is a complete software product. It consists of a large number of GNU project programs (primarily the system utilities and the GNU toolchain), the Linux kernel—the part of the system responsible for running other programs, including device drivers, and so on—and a host of other free programs.

Therefore, today there is a tendency when large IT corporations such as Intel, Oracle or IBM try to support free software development projects by paying the work of the employees of these projects so that the degree of responsibility of developers is at a high level. Why do they do this, because open and free software is competitive for them? The answer is simple - they see this as a benefit, which they try not to miss, since every day many programs based on open source software appear, some of which can later become strong commercial products.

There are several main licenses currently used for free software distribution: AROS Public License, BSD License, CDDL, Common Public License, GNU Free Documentation License, GNU General Public License, GNU Lesser General Public License, MIT License, Mozilla Public License , Open Directory License, etc. All free licenses, one way or another, are characterized by compliance with the principles of copyleft (copyleft is a pun on the word copyright). In contrast The traditional approach to copyright that restricts the freedom to copy works, the copyleft principle uses copyright laws to ensure that it is impossible for anyone to restrict the right to use, modify and distribute both the work itself and works based on it. The idea of ​​copyleft is that anyone who distributes a program, with or without changes, has no right to restrict the freedom of its further distribution or modification. Copyleft guarantees that each user is free in their actions.

The number of licenses that comply with the Definition of open source (open software), at the moment, there are more than fifty. Open Source is a trademark of the Open Source Initiative. There is a special committee that decides whether a license can be called open source. One of the world's largest websites for open source developers is the well-known portal SourceForge.net. On this site, developers can post and co-develop their software projects. There are currently several hundred thousand projects hosted on SourceForge.net, and the number of registered users exceeds one million.

Of course, open and free software is increasingly capturing the audience. Open source programs are quite successfully used by both private users and and commercial state and public organizations. Software based on open source and free software is already used as a pre-installation for some models of laptops and netbooks from various manufacturers. In addition, open source software is gradually conquering the market for automation systems for small and medium-sized enterprises.

With the help of open source projects, you can improve your skills by correcting other people's mistakes and creating something new. You can find a project that will be useful for your own business, for example, in medicine or e-commerce. Also, as practicing programmers, one of the best ways to motivate yourself to get into programming is to work on open source projects. Especially for the readers of the Geekbrains blog, we have compiled a list of such projects from different fields of activity:

Medical imaging software package. 3D Slicer is available on multiple platforms including Windows, Linux and OS X.

A tool that allows you to distribute the processing of large amounts of data across clusters of computers using simple programming models.

A popular software package for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases, and more. A completely open development process means that anyone can report bugs, request new features, or improve the software. It is written in the international open standard format, so it accepts files from other open office software packages.

A content management platform that powers millions of websites and applications.

A media manager designed to create large centralized media libraries.

Free operating system like Unix.

Office suite for collaborative development with functionality similar to Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org.

System for creating courses. A free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites. Moodle has become very popular among educators around the world as a tool for creating dynamic websites for their students.

Software for creating and managing educational audio and video content.

Multiplatform enterprise content management system written in Java. Works with multiple databases (including MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLLite, and more) and supports multiple authentication methods.

Software for creating private and public clouds.

The service allows you to create surveys and share with contacts on the site. A convenient way to collect data for further analysis.

DICOM server for healthcare and medical research. Designed to facilitate the management of medical image data. A good tool for automating medical imaging tasks specific to each medical facility.

The project was created by the Open Source community and is designed to provide better solutions for enterprises through business intelligence.
Main applications:

• reporting
• analysis
• data collection
• business intelligence platform

Java™ developers can use project components to quickly create their own business intelligence solutions.

Modular open source digital data management system.

Free software for e-commerce.

Library for fast filtering and sorting of large collections - up to 100,000 items in the browser.

Open source languages

An open source programming language and development environment for people who want to create images and animations.

R is an open programming language and software environment for statistical calculations and graphics. The R language is widely used among statisticians for the development of statistical software and data analysis.

Where can I find more open source projects?

One of the largest web services for the joint development of IT projects. Absolutely free for open source projects. The motto of the “Social coding” service can be translated as “We code together”.

Designed to popularize open source projects. With the tools provided there, developers have created powerful software in over 430,000 projects; the resource has more than 3.7 million registered users. The popular catalog brings together over 41.8 million clients with open source projects and serves over 4,800,000 downloads per day.

The goal of Fossdroid is to promote open source applications on Android through the F-Droid project. Fossdroid takes its data from F-Droid and organizes apps in a Google Play-like order, with the ability to view them by popularity.

How do I know if software is open source and what are the rules for using it?

It must be understood that not all open source projects can be used for commercial purposes or freely modified. To find out if software is open source and what are the rules for its use, you need to look at its license. Usually its full text is directly in the code.

Ardour is a digital audio workstation. With it, you can record, edit and mix multi-track audio. You can create your own discs, mix video soundtracks, or just experiment with your new musical ideas.

Ardour's features include multi-channel recording, non-erase editing with unlimited undo/redo, full automation support, an advanced mixer, timecode sync, and hardware control from panels like the Mackie Control Universal. If you are looking for a replacement for tools like ProTools, Nuendo, Pyramix or Sequoia, then Ardour is definitely what you need.

Audacity

Audacity is a free and easy to use audio editor for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity for the following purposes:

• Live sound recording.
• Converting tape and cassette recordings to digital recordings.
• Editing files in Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF formats.
• Mixing sounds.
• Changing the speed of sound and tone.
• and much more…

Grip

Grip is a CD player and CD ripper for the Gnome desktop. Its functionality is based on cdparanoia, but it is also possible to use external rippers (eg cdda2wav). Automatic conversion to MP3 (and other audio formats) is also supported, so you can burn an entire disc to MP3 at once. There is support for disc databases on the Internet, so it is possible to automatically fill in tags in the resulting MP3 files. Grip works with DigitalDJ, making it easy to create a computerized version of your music collection.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is a drum program for GNU/Linux. Its main goal is professional, but at the same time simple and intuitive drum programming, based on templates.

Jokosher

Jokosher is a simple yet powerful multi-channel studio. Jokosher is a complete application for recording, editing, mixing and exporting audio. It has been designed with ease of use in mind.

The developers of Jokosher have rethought the process of creating music at every level, and they managed to make a program that is damn easy to use.

LMMS

LMMS was conceived as a free alternative to popular (but paid and closed source) programs like FruityLoops/FL Studio, Cubase and Logic, all of which allow you to create music on your computer. This includes creating repeating fragments, synthesizing and mixing sounds, arranging samples, working with a MIDI keyboard, and much more.

MusE

MusE is a MIDI/audio sequencer capable of recording and editing audio. Its author is Werner Schweer. MusE is intended to be a complete multi-channel virtual studio for Linux.

• MIDI sequencing
• Record/Playback/Import
• Input filters
• Audio sequencing
• Record/Play Multiple Mono/Stereo I/O
• AudioGroups function
• LASH- provides audio effects like chorus / flanger in real time!
• Jack- jack-audio-connection-kit. Used in midi/audio routing.
• Internal Audio Routing Interface
• ALSA— Advanced Linux Sound Architecture

You can use multiple sound cards to connect multiple external devices and work with them in MusE.

rosegarden

Rosegarden is a professional audio and MIDI sequencer, note editor and versatile music editing environment.

soundConverter

soundKonverter is a wrapper for various audio converters.

Main functions:

• Converting Audio Files
• calculation
• CD ripping

Streamripper

With the rise of file-sharing networks such as Napster, Gnutella and now Mojonation and Freenet, any Internet user can download almost any MP3 song in a fairly short amount of time, but often people don't know what they want. Streamripper allows you to download an audio stream from an Internet radio station. Many MP3 radio stations only play songs from certain genres, so you can download your entire collection of goa/trance music, jazz collections, punk rock collections, or whatever you want. You just need to "set" Streamripper on this audio stream and wait.

Graphic applications (2D)

Cenon

Cenon is a graphics program of a special kind. Built on a modular graphics core, Cenon provides a wide range of functionality. Many applications are based on this kernel.

The Cenon kernel is free, which means it is available in source codes for many computer platforms, including GNU/Linux.

GIMPshop

GIMPshop is a modification of the free GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) aimed at emulating the look and feel of Adobe Photoshop. The main task of the program is to provide comfortable work in GIMP users who are accustomed to Photoshop.

GIMPshop has inherited all the advantages of GIMP, including wide functionality, customization flexibility. GIMPshop modifies the menu structure (so it looks like Photoshop), changes the program's terminology to Adobe terminology, and on the Windows version uses the extension Deweirdifier to group multiple GIMP windows in one place, using the MDI system common to Windows graphics editors. GIMPshop does not support Photoshop extensions, but GIMP extensions, filters, brushes, of course, remain.

Due to changes in the interface, many of the Photoshop tutorials can be completed in GIMPshop, and the rest can be adapted to GIMPshop with minimal changes.

Hugin

An easy-to-use, cross-platform panorama imaging toolkit. Based on Panorama Tools.

With Hugin, you can merge multiple photos into one seamless panorama, stitch any sequence of overlapping images, and more.

inkscape

An open source vector graphics editor similar in features to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X. It uses the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format of the W3C standard.

Inkscape supports a lot of advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) with a focus on a sleek interface. You can easily edit nodes, perform complex path operations, and much more. Developers hope to improve the project at the expense of users, because an open development model is used.

carpet artist

KoverArtist is a program for quickly creating covers for CDs and boxes. The main idea is the ability to create a cool looking cover in a few clicks.

ktoon

KToon is a 2D animation toolkit developed by animators (Toonka Films) for animators. The program is distributed under the GPL license. The development platform is KDevelop using G++, OpenGL and Qt tools.

Krita

Krita is a raster editor. Krita is distributed with KOffice since version 1.4. The program is simple, but contains additional interesting features, such as drawing along a guideline (it has never been so easy to draw a spray gun in a straight line!) And the latest features, such as 16-bit color, support for CMYK, L*a*b, and even images OpenEXR HDR format.

MyPaint

MyPaint is a fast drawing program. There is support for graphic tablets with variable pressure, a good set of brushes comes with the program. With a little persistence, you can even create your own brushes, with the main focus on the dynamics of the brush (change with speed, pressure, or randomly). The size of the canvas is unlimited, the number of cancellations too. However, layers are not supported.

Open Office Draw

Draw is an easy way to present graphics and diagrams, from quick sketches to complex drawings.

• Move frequently used drawing tools around the screen for faster access.
• Control the appearance of drawings and diagrams using the toolbar Style and Formatting.
• Work with objects, rotate them in two or three dimensions; you can also place 3D objects such as spheres, rings, cubes, etc.
• Group objects, ungroup and edit them at once when they are grouped.
• A clever rendering system allows you to create photorealistic images using nothing but textures, lighting effects, transparency, perspective effects, etc.
• Smart connectors make it much easier to create flowcharts, organization charts, network diagrams, and more. You just need to specify "sticky points", and the connectors will "stick" to them.
• When drawing, the linear dimensions of your objects are automatically displayed.
• There is a large collection of pictures in the Gallery; you can create your own pictures and put them in the gallery.
• Save graphics in OpenDocument format, the new international standard for office documents. This format (XML based) means you won't be tied to the Draw program itself. The graphics you draw can be accessed from any program that is compatible with the OpenDocument standard.
• Import graphics from all common formats (including BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and WMF).
• If you wish, you can create Flash versions (.swf) of your images in Draw.

Panorama Tools

Tools for viewing, creating and editing panoramic images:

• PTStitcher: High quality and easy to use image stitcher. Supports many formats.
• Panorama Tools: A Photoshop extension for creating and editing panoramic images.
• PTViewer: High quality spherical viewer. There is a standalone and Java version for multiple platforms.

Pixelize

Pixelize is a program that can make a duplicate of reduced pieces of images as close as possible to the original.

The essence of her work is to divide the image into a fine rectangular grid. Each rectangle is analyzed and replaced with an image selected from an extensive database. Pixelize tries to find an image that is closest to the selected rectangle.

Pixelize works best when the database is large. If it contains about 1000 images, the result of Pixelize can be quite acceptable.

Scribus

Scribus is an open source program designed for professional page layout on Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows systems. The program professes a new approach to page layout, and the output of the program is ready for printing.

Beneath Scribus' modern, friendly interface hides professional publishing features such as CMYK color support, ICC color management, and universal PDF creation.

skencil

Skencil is an open source interactive vector graphics editor. The program runs on GNU/Linux and other UNIX-compatible systems, the program is flexible and at the same time allows you to create high-quality illustrations, diagrams, etc. A unique feature (for a graphics editor of this kind) is that Skencil is implemented in almost the highest level interpreted language Python. Python is a powerful object-oriented language and easy to use.

Synfig

Synfig is a powerful vector graphic editor for flat animation, designed from the ground up. According to the developers: "although there are already other programs on the market for effectively creating flat animation, however, we are unfamiliar with programs that can do the same as ours."

Flat animation has always been expensive to create, as each frame must be drawn by hand. Even today, when we have digital drawing programs at our disposal, the process is still based on the laborious drawing of individual intermediate frames between reference frames (twinning).

Synfig's animation technology eliminates the need for manual twinning - it creates smooth motion itself, and the animator does not have to draw each frame manually.

Thus, you can significantly speed up the drawing process.

Xara Xtreme

Xara Xtreme for Linux is a powerful general purpose graphics editor. Runs on Unix platforms including Linux, FreeBSD and (in development) Mac OS X.

Formerly known as Xara LX, the program is based on Xara Xtreme for Windows, which is currently the fastest graphics editor. The source code for Xara Xtreme was open sourced in early 2006, and has been ported to Linux. This process is almost complete and Xara Xtreme for Linux is now available for download.

Xara Xtreme for Linux:

• Very fast program
• Functions similar to those of powerful graphic editors
• Easy to learn and use
• Lightweight interface, not overloaded with controls. Multiple floating windows, palettes, menus, etc.
• A large amount of educational material, lessons, films, tips. The project community is very large.

Graphic programs (3D)

Art Of Illusion

Art of Illusion is a free 3D modeling and rendering software. It is written entirely in Java and should run on any J2SE 1.4 or later compliant Java virtual machine.

In many ways, the program can compete with paid competitors. The most important features include mesh-based modeling tools, skeletal animation, and a graphical language for designing textures and materials.

Blender

Blender is a free 3D scene creation package. Versions are available for all major operating systems, distributed under the GNU General Public License. Model -> Shadows -> Animation -> Rendering -> Merging -> Interactive 3D.

Crystal Space

Crystal Space is a free cross-platform real-time 3D graphics engine. Used in some games.

FreeWRL

• FreeWRL supports the open standards VRML97 and X3D;
• Recognized as a compliant "Interchange Profile" by the Web3d Consortium;
• Works in OS X and Linux, works both from browsers and as a standalone application;
• Supports ReWire and MIDI - for sound interaction;
• Capable of connecting to other programs via MIDI, or external EAI and SAI programming interfaces.

G3DViewer

G3DViewer is a 3D model viewer based on the GTK+ library. Supports the following file types:

• 3D Studio (.3ds, .prj)
• LightWave (.lw, .lwb, .lwo)
• Alias ​​Wavefront (.obj)
• Impulse TurboSilver/Imagine (.iob)
• AutoCAD (.dxf)
• Quake II Models (.md2)
• Quake III Models (.md3) (since version 0.2.99.1)
• Neutral File Format (.nff)
• 3D Metafile (.3dmf, .3mf, .b3d)
• Caligari TrueSpace Objects (.cob)
• Quick3D Objects & Scenes (.q3o, q3s)
• VRML 1.0 files (.wrl, .vrml) (starting from 0.1.1, works with errors)
• AC3D objects (.ac, .acc) (since 0.1.99.1)
• LeoCAD Models (.lcd) (starting from 0.2.99.1)
• Racer car models (.ar, .dof) (since libg3d 0.0.5, incomplete functionality)
• Ultimate Stunts car models (.glb) (since libg3d 0.0.5)
• VDrift car models (.joe, .car) (since libg3d 0.0.5)

K3DSurf

K3DSurf is a program designed to visualize and edit mathematical models in three, four, five and six dimensions. K3DSurf supports parametric equations and isosurfaces.

Brief description of K3DSurf features:

• Interactive visualization by mouse movements (right button - rotate, middle - move, left - zoom).
• Real-time animation (rotation) and morphing (due to the introduction of the t_time variable). Animation and morphing can be controlled using the processor load and delay interval controls of the t_time variable.
• Create screenshots by copying the render window or using the best ray tracer - Povray.
• Creation of animated scenes.
• Creation of mesh-files describing the shape of the mathematical model.

Supported formats

• Povscript: Format of Povray, the best ray tracing program.
• VRML2: used in most modern browsers, you need the appropriate extension.
• OBJ: A well-known format supported by most 3D editors (Blender, MAYA and Moray).

KPovModeler

KPovModeler is a program for creating models for subsequent rendering of scenes in POV-Ray(TM). The program is designed for the KDE desktop.

For most 3D modelers, POV-Ray is nothing more than a rendering engine, and often they are forced to use only a limited part of the POV-Ray scripting language. However, this does not apply to KPovModeler, where you can use all the POV-Ray features by translating the POV-Ray language into a graphics tree.

Almost all functions of the POV-Ray scripting language can be used in KPovModeler. "Almost" - because you cannot directly use variables, loops, macros and some other operators. On the other hand, KPovModeler allows you to use pieces of POV-Ray scripts using the "Raw POV-Ray" tool; such "raw" code will be considered by POV-Ray itself exclusively at the rendering stage.

KPovModeler supports the following features:

• Scene management by means of a graphic tree.
• Changes to objects using control points in the graphical view, or direct manipulation in the object's attributes window.
• Non-blocking scene rendering with OpenGL.
• Copy/paste and drag-and-drop POV-Ray code in the object tree.
• Undo and redo actions.
• Scene rendering and texture viewing with POV-Ray, from within the program.
• Support for almost all POV-Ray objects.
• Support for all textures.
• Prototypes (announcements) and descriptions.
• All camera projection modes.

PovRay

Persistence of Vision Raytracer is a free, highly realistic 3D graphics creation tool. Versions for Windows, Mac OS/Mac OS X and i86 Linux are officially available. The source code is available for those who want to port the program to other platforms.

white dune

White_dune is a low-level VRML97 tool for Unix/Linux/MacOSX and Windows platforms. It is capable of viewing VRML97 format files. Unlike the high-level tools, it uses a lightweight model based on the VRML97 standard.

Application video

AvidMUX

Avidemux is a free video editor that is easy to edit, filter and encode video. There is support for many file types, including AVI, DVD-compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, and you can use any codec. Tasks can be automated using projects, a job queue and a powerful scripting engine.

Cinelerra

Basically, Cinelerra is designed for three things: capturing, composing, and editing audio and video.

If you want to create films with the same scope as the pros, then Cinelerra is definitely your choice.

CinePaint

CinePaint is designed for retouching movies and photos. CinePaint can handle a variety of formats such as DPX, 16-bit TIFF and OpenEXR, as well as familiar formats like JPEG or PNG. There is support for 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit color channels, HDR and CMS.

CinePaint is used for frame-by-frame retouching, denoising, restoring and painting textures on 3D models. The program has been used in the production of many feature films, including The Last Samurai, in which flying arrows were drawn with it.

For photographic purposes, CinePaint can import HDR exposures. There is support for 16-bit color printing with the GutenPrint driver. The wide dynamic range of CinePaint is important when processing black and white photos, because they have only one channel.

Jahshaka

• Edit videos quickly and flexibly.
• Create effects in real time.
• Unlimited possibilities in animation.
• Draw on video frames.
• Create music with professional tools.
• Work with any format at any resolution.

Kino

Kino is a non-linear digital video editing program for GNU/Linux. The program perfectly integrates with IEEE-1394 when recording, works with VCRs and allows you to record video back to the camera. Video capture is in Raw DV or AVI formats, in type-1 DV and type-2 DV encodings (separate audio stream).

You can upload multiple video clips, cut and paste audio/video segments, and save these steps in a step list file (SMIL XML format). Most of the editing and navigation commands are borrowed from the vi program.

Kino can export complex movie to many formats: DV over IEEE 1394, Raw DV, DV AVI, single frames, WAV, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. Single frame import/export is based on the gdk-pixbuf library, which supports BMG, GIF, JPEG, PNG, PPM, SVG, Targa, TIFF, and XPM formats. Working with MP3 requires the lame codec. Ogg Vorbis requires oggenc. MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 require mjpegtools or ffmpeg, while MPEG-4 requires ffmpeg.

LiVES

LiVES is a hybrid of real-time video processing software and non-linear video editing software. You can edit your video right away without worrying about formats, frame sizes or frame rates. This is a very flexible tool that can be used by both VJs and video editors - mix and switch video clips from the keyboard, edit them and glue them together on a multi-channel timeline. You can even record live video and then edit and save as a new clip!

recordMyDesktop

recordMyDesktop is a GNU/Linux desktop recording program. Its main sides are simplicity and efficiency in performing its main task.

The program is divided into two parts; a simple command line tool that performs simple video capture and encoding tasks; and a graphical interface that provides the functionality of the program in a more user-friendly way.

slideshow creator

With Slideshow Creator and dvd-slideshow you can convert your pictures into a beautiful DVD quality slideshow embellished with special effects. It remains to add musical accompaniment, and it will be generally cool!

System Applications

APTonCD

APTonCD is a graphical utility that allows you to create one or more CDs or DVDs with packages downloaded using APT-GET or APTITUDE. In this way, you can create a portable repository that can be used on other computers that, for example, do not have access to the network. It is also possible to create a disk containing all deb packages from a single repository.

beagle

Beagle is a tool that allows you to quickly find your information on your local computer.

In more technical terms, Beagle is a Linux program that runs independently of the desktop environment. Beagle transparently and unobtrusively indexes your data in real time. For example:

• Files are immediately indexed when they are created, re-indexed when they are modified, and removed from the index when they are deleted.
• Emails are indexed when they are downloaded
• The history of instant messages is indexed in real time, line by line.
• Web pages are indexed when they are viewed (if the appropriate browser extension is installed).

ClamAV

Clam AntiVirus is an open source (GPL) antivirus suite for UNIX aimed at checking email on mail servers. The set includes several utilities, including a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon; a scanner that works from the console and a tool for automatically updating virus databases.

Conky

Conky is a lightweight system monitor, highly customizable, runs in X, based on torsmo. The program is being actively developed.

Ekiga

Ekiga (formerly known as GnomeMeeting) is an open source audio and video conferencing software for the GNOME desktop. The application works with H.323 and SIP VoIP protocols. There is support for many audio and video codecs, it interacts well with other SIP-compatible programs, including Microsoft NetMeeting.

Endeavor Mark II

Endeavor Mark II is a complete set of programs for working with files. It contains a file browser, image browser, archiver, recycle bin and other utilities for working with files and disks.

FileZilla

FileZilla is a fast FTP and SFTP client.

GParted

GParted is a powerful package for creating, deleting, resizing, moving, checking and copying partitions and filesystems on them. The program is useful for preparing disks before installing operating systems, reorganizing free disk space, copying data on disks, and mirroring one partition to another.

gzip

gzip (GNU zip) is a compression utility developed as a replacement for the compress program. Its main advantages are better compression ratio and freedom from proprietary algorithms.

Katapult

Katapult is a KDE application that allows you to quickly and easily launch applications, open bookmarks, and much more. The functionality of the program can be increased by extensions. The software developer was inspired to create Katapult by a similar Quicksilver application for Mac OS X. Katapult is written in C++.

K3b

K3b was conceived as a complete and simple CD burning program.

MondoRescue

Mondo Rescue is a GPL disaster recovery program. Linux (i386, x86_64, ia64) and FreeBSD (i386) platforms are supported. There are packages for many popular distributions (RedHat, RHEL, SuSE, SLES, Mandriva, Debian, Gentoo). There is support for tape drives, disks, network and CD / DVD as a backup storage; support for many popular file systems; LVM (logical partition management); software and hardware RAID.

openberg

Free software for reading, writing and publishing e-books in open standards.

openSSH

OpenSSH is a free implementation of the SSH communication facility used by administrators on the Internet. Users of services such as telnet, rlogin, ftp should consider having their passwords transmitted unencrypted over the network, and possibly switch to SSH. OpenSSH encrypts all traffic (including passwords) to effectively fight off intruders. In addition, OpenSSH provides secure tunneling features and various authentication methods. There is support for all versions of the SSH protocol.

Pidgin

Pidgin is a multi-protocol instant messaging client that allows you to use different systems at the same time. Here is a list of supported protocols:

• Bonjour
• Gadu Gadu
• Google Talk
• groupwise
• MySpaceIM
• SIMPLE
• Sametime
• Yahoo!
• Zephyr

PuTTY

PuTTY is a free implementation of a Telnet and SSH client on Win32 and Unix systems, and an xterm terminal emulator.

Reconstructor

Reconstructor is a disk burning program for the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution. As a basis, the Desktop (Live), Alternate (Install) or Server disk is used, after which the user can customize the distribution to fit his needs.

If Ubuntu Desktop is chosen as the base, the entire desktop environment can be configured. For example, you can change the composition of the software, change the appearance (splash screen, themes, fonts, wallpapers, etc.), add shortcuts to the desktop, etc.

If you take the basic disk Alternate or Server - similarly, you can change the composition of the programs.

Rox Filer

ROX is a desktop environment along with GNOME, KDE and XFCE. ROX is an attempt to bring the positive aspects of the RISC OS operating system to the world of Unix and Linux. Traditionally, Unix users' work has been about files. Almost everything in Unix is ​​a file: regular files, device files, and even processes (on Linux, for example, they are located in the /proc directory).

However, recent trends in environments (such as KDE or GNOME) are increasingly leaning towards the Windows approach. This leads to hiding the file system from the user, and now the user is forced to do everything through numerous menus and dialog boxes. Users of modern environments (both Windows and Unix) often don't understand where their programs are installed or even where their data is stored. This leads to the fact that the user ceases to fully control his system and does not understand how it works.

The ROX desktop, in contrast, is based on a file system. Its main component is ROX-Filer, a powerful graphical file manager that, in addition to being a popular file manager in itself, provides a bunch of other features designed to solve the above problem.

TrueCrypt

Free disk encryption software. Runs on Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.

• Create a virtual encrypted disk inside a file and mount it like a normal disk.
• Encrypt an entire partition or even a storage device (such as a USB flash drive or hard drive).
• Encrypt the partition with Windows installed (pre-boot authentication).
• Encryption is performed automatically, in real time (on the fly), transparent to the user.

Provides two levels of protection:

1) Hidden section (steganography).

2) It is impossible to identify any TrueCrypt partition (partitions cannot be distinguished by almost random data).

VNC

VNC is an acronym for Virtual Network Computing. In fact, this is a remote diagnostics system that allows you to see the computing environment not only on the machine on which it is running, but also from anywhere on the Internet. A variety of hardware architectures are supported.

WINE

Wine is an open source implementation of the Windows API on X, OpenGL, and Unix.

We can say that Wine is a compatibility layer designed to run Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API. The source code is 100% non-Microsoft code. Although Wine can use native Windows DLLs if desired. Wine also provides development tools for porting Windows source code to Unix systems. Thus, it is possible to compile and run Windows programs without modification on x86 Unix systems: Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Solaris.

XFE

X File Explorer (Xfe) is a file manager for X, like MS-Explorer or Total Commander. Although all of these file managers are feature rich and well designed, you have to admit that they are huge! If you're a console junkie, a light desktop user, or just have an old computer, then the cost of having such a file manager can be substantial, which isn't a good thing. Many file managers, in addition to everything, are dependent on the desktop environment and are forced to load a bunch of other libraries when they are loaded. And the Xfe file manager, on the other hand, is not dependent on the desktop and is undemanding to resources.

Software development tools

Bugzilla

(Yes, Bugzilla is a web app, but it's so cool.) Bugzilla is a free web-based bug tracking system originally developed and used by the Mozilla project. Since being open sourced by Netscape Communications in 1998, Bugzilla has been adopted by many organizations as the go-to bug tracking tool. The application is popular among developers of both free and proprietary programs.

Eclipse

Eclipse is an open community whose projects are focused on building an open development platform consisting of extensible shells (framework), tools and libraries for building, deploying and managing software products throughout their entire life cycle. A large and vibrant ecosystem of major technology providers, innovative start-ups, universities, research institutes and individuals all support the Eclipse platform.

Gambas

Gambas is a free development environment based on the Basic language interpreter with object extensions. The system is similar to Visual Basic (but it's not a clone!).

With Gambas you can quickly develop graphical interfaces for Qt or GTK+ programs, work with MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, ODBC and SQLite databases, manage KDE applications through the DCOP engine, translate your program into many languages, easily create network applications, 3D applications OpenGL graphics, CGI web applications, and more.

Geany

Geany is a text editor based on the GTK2 library. The editor contains the basic functions of an integrated development environment (IDE). The program is small and fast, and depends little on other packages. There is support for many file types, markup languages ​​and many nice features.

Gobby

Gobby is a free collaborative editor that supports multiple documents in a single session and online chat. The application runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix compatible platforms. The windowing toolkit uses GTK+ 2.6, so the application does not fall out of the general GNOME look and feel.

jEdit

jEdit is an advanced programmer's text editor that has invested hundreds (including extension development time) man-years into development.

netbeans

NetBeans IDE is a free, integrated application development environment. With NetBeans, you have everything you need to professionally create desktop, enterprise, web, and mobile applications. Supported programming languages ​​are Java, C/C++ and even Ruby. The IDE runs on multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris; easy to install and use.

SciTE

SciTE is a text editor based on SCIntilla. Originally designed to demonstrate Scintilla(), it has now evolved into a useful general purpose editor with the ability to compile and run programs.

Web development tools

Amaya

Amaya is a web editor, i.e. a tool for creating and updating documents directly on the web. Page viewers are seamlessly integrated with editing and remote access functions in a single workspace. This approach follows the original vision of the web as a space for collaboration rather than one-way publishing.

Aptana Studio

Aptana Studio is a free Ajax development environment with over a million downloads. Web developers all over the world are already convinced that Aptana Studio is the best program of its kind. Studio provides free extensions for PHP, Ruby on Rails, Adobe AIR and even Apple iPhone development.

Of course, Studio contains features for developing Ajax applications based on Jaxer. Indeed, as of Studio 1.1, Jaxer is fully supported, so developing Ajax applications does not require any server to be installed. You simply create a new HTML document and you can immediately implement a client / server application with support for database access, network access and much more.

bluefish

Bluefish is a powerful editor designed for programmers and web designers, containing many features that make it easier to write websites, scripts, and code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages, especially for editing dynamic and interactive websites.

Font Forge

FontForge is a font creation tool. With it, you can create and edit fonts in postscript, truetype, opentype, cid-keyed, multi-master, cff, svg and bitmap (bdf, FON, NFNT) formats. You can convert fonts from one format to another. There is support for many font formats from the Macintosh system.

gFTP

gFTP is a free multi-threaded FTP client for *NIX architectures. One nice feature is support for FXP transfers (file transfer between two remote FTP servers).

Compozer

KompoZer is very easy to use, making it the best choice for casual users who want to create an attractive and professional looking website without knowledge of HTML markup language or web programming.

Kruler

Kruler - on-screen ruler (unit of measure - pixels) and on-screen color determinant. Program for the KDE environment.

Quanta Plus

Quanta Plus is a stable and feature rich web development environment. The principles of Quanta have always been thoughtful architectural foundations; development aimed at efficient and natural use; maximum flexibility and extensibility for the user. The developers of Quanta were committed to making the program the best among such programs supported by the community. Much of Quanta is designed to make these features easily extensible. Even the way to work with the XML DTD is described using XML files that the user can edit. Other features include the ability to import DTDs, write scripts to control editor content, visually create dialog boxes for scripts, and assign scripts to virtually any file operation.

seamonkey

The SeaMonkey project is a community effort to create an application for any Internet need. Popular applications of this kind in the past were Netscape and Mozilla, but now the SeaMonkey project is developing in this direction, combining all the latest concepts. The functionality of the program includes a web browser, mail and newsgroup client, HTML editor, IRC chat and web development tools. SeaMonkey is sure to be useful for advanced users, web developers and enterprise users.

wink

Wink - applications for creating lessons and presentations, primarily for creating visual aids for working with programs (for example, visual lessons for MS Word / Excel, etc.) Using Wink, you can create screenshots, add explanations, buttons, headings, etc. .P. This way you can get very effective presentations and lessons.

xampp

Many people know from experience that it is not easy to install an Apache web server and even more difficult to bundle it with MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is an easy-to-install Apache distribution that also includes MySQL, PHP, and Perl. XAMPP is actually easy to install on a server - just download the package, extract the content and get started.

Programs for office work

Basket Note Pads

This is a general purpose note taking application. Among the features:

• Easily create notes of any type
• Collect data in one place and share it with others
• Centralize information about your projects
• Quickly organize your thoughts in "idea boxes"
• Make To Do Lists
• And much more.

Firefox

Many people know that Firefox is a web browser. Its distinguishing feature is a huge number of extensions that improve the functionality of Firefox, so you can easily modify Firefox to suit your needs.

Gnome Do

A powerful, fast, and pretty GNOME remote desktop program, but GNOME Do isn't just for GNOME. Although the program was written by a GNOME hobbyist, it also works great in KDE and other environments.

GNOME Do is not a search tool. If you know what you are looking for and what you want, Do will get you there in no time. GNOME Do is not just a program to run other programs. You can send e-mail and instant messages, play music and search for information on the Internet. All this is possible thanks to extensions.

GnuCash

GnuCash is a personal and small business finance accounting software. The application is distributed freely under the GNU GPL license and is available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows platforms.

The program is easy to use, but at the same time powerful and flexible. GnuCash allows you to keep track of bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. The program is based on professional principles of financial management, which guarantees a balance sheet and accurate reports.

home bank

HomeBank is a free program for managing your personal finances. A simple program. You can easily analyze your financial situation with powerful filtering tools and graphs.

inCollector

inCollector is an application for storing various work data (such as notes, message history, quotes, serial numbers, source codes, web addresses, words, etc.). All records can be equipped with tags (tags), which will later help you find the right one. There are also search folders that allow you to search for records by the specified criteria. You can also export (and of course import) records to an external file.

meld

Meld is a visual difference finder. You can compare the contents of two or three files and edit them if needed (differences are updated automatically). You can compare the contents of two or three directories, and if there are differences, search for differences already inside the files. You can view the differences between the current file and a copy of the file on a version control server such as CVS, Subversion, Bazaar-ng, and Mercurial.

openoffice

OpenOffice.org is a multi-platform office suite. It consists of essential desktop applications such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, and vector graphics editor. The interface and functionality of the package resembles other office packages. The flexible OpenOffice.org handles a variety of formats remarkably well, including proprietary Microsoft Office formats and the neutral OpenDocument format from the OASIS consortium.

The package is available in over 65 languages, and more are coming thanks to the community. OpenOffice.org is stable on Solaris, Linux (including PPC Linux), Windows, Mac OS X (X11) and many other platforms.

PDFedit

A free (and open source) PDF document editor. There are both graphical and console versions.

qOrganizer

qOrganizer is a general purpose organizer consisting of a calendar with a schedule, reminders, a daily journal/notes, and a To Do list. Students may find useful features such as a class schedule and a diary for grades and passes. The program is easy to use and takes a new approach to organizers.

RSSowl

Applications that collect data from sites equipped with an RSS feed are called "aggregators". RSSOwl is an application of this kind. RSSOwl allows you to collect, organize, update and save information from such news feeds. This process is simple and enjoyable. Selected information can be saved in various formats for further offline reading or sharing with other people. The application is easy to set up, there are versions for different languages, and most importantly, it works on many platforms.

Specto

Specto is a desktop application that monitors for changing events (such as website updates, mail received, changes to files and folders, system processes, etc.) and pops up notifications when these events occur.

For example, Specto can keep a website (or news feed, or picture, or whatever) updated and notify the user of activity. In this way, you get rid of the need to constantly go to this site to find out if there have been updates.

Sunbird

Mozilla Sunbird is a cross-platform calendar built on the Mozilla Toolkit. It is a simple and fully functional calendar application that can be used on many platforms.

Task coach

Task Coach is a simple, open-source app for managing personal tasks and To Do lists. This program was born out of Frank's frustration with the fact that the well-known counterparts, such as those built into Outlook or Lotus Notes, do not allow you to create compound tasks. But often tasks consist of several actions. Task Coach was conceived specifically with support for compound tasks.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird allows you to work with e-mail in a way that suits all your specific needs - for example, advanced message search or listening to audio files directly from emails.

Thunderbird 2 offers the user many ways to work with mail folders, such as favorite messages, recently viewed messages, or a folder containing unread messages. As usual, you can create a folder of RSS feeds or a newsgroup to keep up to date with the latest events of your interest. Thunderbird 2 also allows you to expand the message viewing panel to full screen.

In Thunderbird 2, you can tag messages with specific tags such as "To Do" or "Done" and even create custom tags to suit your needs.

tkdiff

tkdiff is a graphical frontend for the diff difference finder. The program consists of two blocks in which you can see the difference between the two files. To quickly navigate through the document, there is support for features such as diff bookmarks and a graphical diff map.

Zim

Zim is a WYSIWYG text editor written in Gtk2-Perl. The editor aims to bring the idea of ​​a wiki to the desktop. Each page is saved as a text file with wiki markup. Pages may contain links to other pages, pages are saved automatically. Pages are organized in a hierarchical structure that resembles hierarchical editors (so-called outliners). Zim can be used to maintain To Do lists or as a personal diary.

All software on the LiveCD and DVD is free and open source software (free and open source), with some exceptions (Flash, Opera, Acrobat Reader, and others) located in a non-oss repository. When we talk about free software, We mean freedom, not price.

What is free software

The free software movement was started by Richard M. Stallman, who founded the GNU project (recursive acronym: GNU's Not Unix) in 1984. A year later, he founded the Free Software Foundation (Free Software Foundation, also known as FSF) .

Free software can be divided into 4 major "degrees of freedom":

• freedom use programs in any way. (freedom 0)
• freedom learning how to work program, as well as adapting it to your needs. (freedom 1) This requires access to the source code.
• freedom distribution of copies programs. You can share with a neighbor. (freedom 2)
• freedom improve the program and publish your improvements, for the benefit of the entire community (freedom 3). This requires access to the source code.

Non-free software is called proprietary software. It is important not to confuse shareware and free (freeware) programs with free ones, they are different things.

What is Open Source Software

The free software and open source movement began in the early 1990s by people who emphasized the technical and economic benefits of using open source and the open model of free software development. However, there is a small amount of code that is recognized as free software by the Open Source Society, so the term FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) is often used. For, strictly speaking, the concepts of "free software" (Free Software) and "open source software" (Open Source Software) are not at all identical, as one might think. For example, the license agreement for a software product may allow you to examine its source code, while prohibiting you from making changes to it and / or distributing copies of it. In this case, the product is open (Open Source), but is not free (Free).

Benefits of Using Free Software

Free software is beneficial for a number of reasons, the main ones being listed below.

Error correction

If a software product is free, this gives you the right to fix bugs found in it, as well as modify it to suit your needs. If the program is proprietary, then you cannot fix the errors found in it or expand the functionality yourself. In this case, you will be forced to contact the owner of the software product with a request to make the necessary corrections and add the features you need. However, there is no guarantee that the owner will do this.

Sharing

Free software gives you the right to distribute copies of it, thus helping your friends to use free software without obtaining licenses.

Know and control what and how the program does

In the vast majority of cases, you cannot know exactly what the proprietary program is doing. Thus, you cannot be sure that the program does only what you ask it to do, because it can do some actions without your knowledge (for example, send information about you as a user to its creators, or have undocumented capabilities of various character). Of course, in the case of using a free program, you are completely insured against such troubles. After all, you have at your disposal the source code of the program, which allows you to know exactly what and how the program does. If some of its features and / or features of work do not suit you, you can make the necessary changes to the code.

Technical Benefits

The open source code of a free software product is available to a large number of people, which gives them the opportunity to fix bugs found in it; this contributes to the development and improvement of the product. Such a system of "peer review" can be compared to the scientific method of research. In contrast, the closed source code of a proprietary product is kept secret, and is almost never seen by anyone outside the developer company.

Economic Benefits

Free software provides companies with the opportunity to share the cost of developing software. For example, Novell and RedHat compete in the development of the same programs, but in doing so they help each other. IBM and HP are also competitors, but they also made a significant contribution to the development of the Linux kernel, thereby sharing the development costs. Free software allows you to have a competitive market for technical support, and therefore the quality of it is usually very high. With proprietary software, the situation is exactly the opposite: only the developer company has access to the source code and is able to offer appropriate technical support, and this shows some degree of monopoly. In addition, the issue of the cost of acquiring a software product should be included in the economic benefits. In the event that it is free, you can download a copy of it from the Internet once (or purchase it on hard media), install it on any number of computers and use it indefinitely. If the product is proprietary, then the terms of the license agreement may severely restrict the use of the product (for example, by limiting the number of installations and/or the time of use).

I am not a programmer. Why should I care about the above?

Indeed, most of the freedoms and opportunities listed above can only be used by programmers who can read and write code. However, don't think that free software is just for programmers. If you, who are not one, wish to somehow modify the free software you are using to extend its functionality, you can (alone or in association with other users) hire a programmer to do this for you. This practice is very common. Also, you don't have to be a programmer to distribute a free program.

In the 1990s, free software was considered exotic in the corporate environment, and the only notable competitor to proprietary giants led by Microsoft was Red Hat for a long time, but since the second half of the 2000s, the situation began to change rapidly. Open source software has become mainstream for many large companies, and dozens of trusted open source vendors have emerged that have achieved the appropriate high level of expertise and experience to serve large and demanding enterprise clients.

For 2014, there are many players who successfully compete with commercial software vendors in a number of areas. In addition to Red Hat, these are open source organizations such as Google, Apache Software, Novell, SUSE, Acquia, etc. More and more OpenSource analogues of existing proprietary solutions appear on the market. Open source communities are getting stronger and improving the quality and functionality of products.

As a rule, the development itself is offered for free, and it is commercialized through support and customization. This creates additional competition and, as a result, promotes the development of open source software products.

In almost all industries and activities, there is an opportunity to use software based on open source code. Almost every proprietary software has a valid open source counterpart:

• Cisco VPN - OpenVPN,
• Oracle Database - PostgreSQL
• Microsoft Hyper-V - OpenVZ,
• MS Active Directory - Samba,
• Avaya IP Office - Asterisk, etc.)

Based on specific business objectives, you can compare the cost and timing of implementing a solution based on proprietary software and OpenSource.

Open source in the countries of the world

USA

In March 2016, the US presidential administration submitted a draft government use bill. Market participants supported the initiative.

According to a document released by the White House, US government agencies can share source code for certain projects with each other in order to increase their efficiency and eliminate the need to develop the product again. More about it.

India

In October 2011, it became known that the government of Punjab decided to purchase software from Microsoft, overturning a 2008 decision to install free software on 46,000 computers in 4,956 schools. ʻWe have decided to reconsider our previous decision,` said Baldeo Purushartha, the state's school minister.

The Government of Punjab launched an informatization program for students in grades 6-12 in 2004-2005. The Punjab Department of ICT Education is implementing a project that will provide computer labs with the necessary equipment, software and broadband internet connection in all primary schools. At the same time, Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS), tested and certified by the Linux Foundation for use in schools, received wide support at the state level due to its affordability.

According to the Punjab State President, as of 2008, the minimum cost of a software update licensed by Microsoft - for 16,578 computers at Rs 1,375 per computer - was Rs 23 million over five years. For this reason, in September 2008, the Government of Punjab decided to purchase and install BOSS in all public primary schools and stated that from 2011 all primary school students will be trained in the use of BOSS. The work was completed in April 2011, including the training of 6,600 teachers.

But on August 8, 2011, after a comprehensive analysis of the results of the project, the head of the Department of School Education of the State of Punjab said that `the Department of School Education will return to using software from Microsoft ... for teaching children in the primary grades of public schools`. The cost of renewing the licenses will be about 7 million rupees, 3.77 million of which has already been allocated by the government.

Moreover, about 90,000 computers will be installed in public schools connected to the EDUASAT network, through which students will be able to watch live broadcasts from various lectures. According to preliminary calculations, the initial price of the Microsoft software and license will be 30 million rupees. This amount does not include the price of equipment, etc.

Earlier, in February 2011, it was decided to use BOSS to operate in the EDUASAT network. But now, according to Purushart: `In order to make the most of the installed computers on which students will learn Microsoft software, we want to use Microsoft in EDUASAT as well`.

Note that Punjab was the first state to actively implement Linux in schools. Currently, BOSS is still in use in the Indian states of Haryana, Gujarat, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh.

Germany

According to a recent study by the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), Germany ranks fourth in the world in terms of open source software penetration in the public sector. In 2001, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs (and with it all embassies and consulates) switched to Linux. The consulting firm McKinsey has confirmed several times that the Foreign Office saves a lot by using Linux, OpenOffice, and Thunderbird instead of Microsoft's suite of Windows, Office, and Outlook. It was even said that diplomats spend less on IT than employees of any other government agency.

But the trick is that shareware software is sometimes more expensive to operate than unconditionally paid software. Dinosaurs like Microsoft can provide better and cheaper maintenance than smaller Linux support companies. And sometimes it is more profitable to buy a license. Therefore, for example, the same German foreign office is returning to Microsoft software this year. Officials valued in money the permanent problems with technical support, as well as the difficulty in mastering open source software (many employees complained about this) and spoke in the spirit that the miser pays twice.

Russia

Decisions of the government and the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev, domestic open source software was implemented in all schools of the Russian Federation in 2008 and will be installed in all state and budgetary organizations to ensure national security in the field of IT.

Project Penguin - open source implementation

Project "Penguin" - a project for the implementation of Linux Technologies and Open Source Software in schools and universities in Russia in 2009-2010. financed by FAO - the Federal Education Agency of the Russian Federation. Under the Penguin project contract, three stages must be completed:

1. Refinement of textbooks and methodological support
2. Development of technical support and Internet portals
3. Training of 60 thousand teachers in Linux technologies and Open Source

1. The development of basic Informatics textbooks for universities and schools based on Open Source in accordance with state standards and the requirements of the Unified State Examination in Informatics and ICT was completed in 2008-09. 2. Development of Internet support with basic computer science textbooks and basic Open Source packages for Windows and Linux was completed in 2005-2009. 3. Pilot courses for computer science teachers and school teachers on Linux Technologies and Open Source Software were conducted and worked out in 2005-2007. together with the Moscow pedagogical universities of Moscow State Pedagogical University and Moscow State Pedagogical University with the support of UNESCO, IBM Corporation and Linux Center.

• • HAC, prof., PhD 16:32, October 15, 2009 (UTC)

Open source - the opinion of the President of the Russian Federation

At this meeting D.A. Medvedev said:

"... If we sit down now completely on the needle of foreign software and “lay down” for many years, then we will not get off it. And we will develop contrary to global trends. At the same time, it is also impossible to announce that tomorrow we will transfer all computers in schools (and potentially this is a much more serious network of computers) to open source programs with a free license, because there are connection problems, there are technological problems. That is, there is no complete readiness here either. What to do?

We offer take a compromise path, and this path has now begun to be realized. For three years, purchase a licensed package of basic programs (I mean, first of all, operating systems, archivers, offices, editors, photoshops - in general, everything that is usually used by users, including in schools), but at the same time it’s time not to stop, but to work on a domestic software package with open access (and now we’ll talk about this in more detail), so that later, ultimately, in three years (if it works out earlier, even better),

Create such an optimal model in which schools and potentially all government agencies can choose what they need: either continue to use commercial products at their own expense, and not at the expense of federal funds, or switch to an already completely adapted, acceptable to them system based on open access , in open source...".

December 2010: Putin orders power shift to Linux

The history of the document on the transition of authorities to free software dates back to 2007, when the Ministry of Information and Communications began to develop the "Concept for the development of the development and use of free software in the Russian Federation", which was published in the spring of 2008. However, the resignation of Minister Leonid Reiman and the appointment of to his post Igor Shchegolev led to a revision of the concept.

Despite this, in the spring of 2008, a few days before the transfer of power to Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Putin, while still the president of Russia, mentioned the plan for migration to free software of federal institutions in the list of his instructions to the government, thus setting this task to himself.

Open Source Packages for Schools

Open source packages for schools are designed for installation of programs in schools and home computers with Windows and Linux operating systems. The Linux Live-CD is designed to run Open Source on Windows home computers without installing Linux on the machine.

By decisions of the government of the Russian Federation domestic open source software in 2008 and 2009 was sent to all schools in the Russian Federation and will be installed in all state and budgetary organizations to ensure national security in the field of IT.

Open operating system Linux

Open office suite

Open Office suite can be freely installed and used not only on personal computers with Linux operating system, but also on computers with Windows operating system. At the same time, documents and files prepared in the MS Office package can be read and processed in the Open Office package.

Composition of the Open Office suite:

1. OpenOffice.org Writer- Text editor Writer with rich features for creating letters, books, reports, newsletters, brochures and other documents, compatible with MS Office.
2. OpenOffice.org Calc- Calc spreadsheets have the advanced analysis, charting and decision-making capabilities expected from high quality spreadsheets, compatible with MS Office.
3. OpenOffice.org Impress- The Impress presentation editor provides all common media presentation tools such as special effects, animation and drawing tools. Compatible with the Microsoft PowerPoint file format, and can also save your work in numerous graphic formats, including Macromedia Flash (SWF).
4. OpenOffice.org Base- Database Base provides tools for working with databases within a simple interface. It can create and edit forms, reports, queries, tables, views and relationships so that the associated database management is much the same as in other popular database applications. Base includes HSQLDB as its default relational database engine. It can also use dBASE, Microsoft Access, MySQL or Oracle, or any ODBC or JDBC compatible database.
5. Open Office Draw Draw is a vector graphics editor with which you can do everything from simple diagrams or flowcharts to 3D artwork. Draw can import graphics from many common formats and save them in over 20 formats, including PNG, HTML, PDF, and Flash.
6. gimp- raster graphics editor Gimp, a program for creating and processing raster graphics. Vector graphics are partially supported.

Open text editor Writer

OpenOffice.org Writer is a word processor and visual hypertext editor, part of OpenOffice.org and is free software (released under the LGPL license).

Writer is similar to Microsoft Word and the functionality of these editors is about the same. Provides the user with modern tools for typing, editing and formatting documents.

Along with the familiar interface and functionality:

* create and design paragraphs of text and pages, * add sections and footers, * insert images and multimedia objects, * preview and print documents, * record changes and review texts, * automatically format tables of contents, indexes and footnotes, * add macros and elements management, * work with tables, * spell checking and much more,

The concept of applying styles is a great solution to make creating and formatting documents easier. Working with styles is supported in all components of the office suite, but it is in OpenOffice.org Writer that it is most fully implemented.

Five groups of styles - paragraphs, characters, pages, frames and lists - provide the user with many options for easily formatting documents. A dedicated Styles and Formatting panel lets you manage styles by modifying existing ones and creating new ones. And the more complex the document, the more often you have to change it, the more obvious the advantage of styling becomes.

Another tool, the Navigator, provides the ability to quickly navigate through a document by selecting headings, footnotes, sidebars, or other objects as reference points.

As with other components, Writer has a large number of add-ons (extensions) that improve the component's basic functionality or provide additional features such as grammar checking or publishing to MediaWiki.

Writer supports a large number of formats for importing and exporting files, including saving to PDF and importing docx. And sending a file by e-mail is done with the click of a button.

Open Calc Spreadsheets

start: OpenOffice.org Calc is a spreadsheet application. With it, you can analyze the input data, do calculations, predict, summarize data from different sheets and tables, build charts and graphs.

Calc is an up-to-date and demanded component of OpenOffice.org for working with spreadsheets in the business environment. A favorite tool for accountants and managers to create reports.

Step-by-step entry of formulas into spreadsheet cells using the Wizard facilitates the formation of complex and nested formulas, demonstrates descriptions of each parameter and the final result at any stage of entry.

Conditional formatting and cell styles allow you to organize the finished data, while pivot tables and graphs show the results of work.

More than two dozen file import and export formats, including text import functions, allow you to operate with almost any data. Also, using a special tool, you can import data from other sources, such as databases, or you can create an updatable range so that the imported data is always up to date.

Links between different spreadsheets and collaborative data editing are supported (since OpenOffice.org 3.0).

A variety of settings are available for printing finished sheets on the printer: scale, margins, headers and footers. And the built-in spell check, as in a text editor, will improve the quality of the finished report.

Open vector graphics editor Draw

OpenOffice.org Draw- vector graphics editor, comparable in functionality to CorelDRAW, is part of OpenOffice.org.

Vector graphics editor Draw is a drawing tool that uses vector graphics. It contains a number of services that allow you to quickly create all kinds of drawings. Vector graphics allow you to save and display images as vectors (two dots and a line) rather than as a collection of pixels (dots on a screen). Vector graphics make it easy to save and scale images.

draw graphics editor perfectly integrated into the OpenOffice.org system, which makes it very easy to exchange drawings between any system modules. For example, if you create a drawing in Draw, you can easily use it in a Writer document by copying and pasting. You can also work with graphics directly in the Writer and Impress modules using a subset of the functions and tools from Draw.

The package includes full-featured "connectors" between shapes that can use a variety of line styles and allow you to draw drawings such as flowcharts.

The need for a vector editor as part of the office suite is beyond doubt. The scope of such an editor is quite wide: from the simplest drawings and announcements to diagrams, diagrams and drawings.

In addition to your own objects, you can insert charts, formulas, and other elements created in other components of OpenOffice.org into pictures. Draw also supports the export of bitmaps in most formats, both common and specialized.

Draw has all the necessary tools inherent in vector editors:

* Connecting lines, dimension lines, tables. * Working with text and text effects; * Change color fill, shadow, transparency; * Placing, anchoring and managing objects using slides, layers and guides; * Various operations on objects are supported: addition, subtraction, grouping and transformation of shapes; * Drawing three-dimensional objects; * Drawing with graphic primitives, Bezier curves; * Effects: lighting, morphing and duplication;

In addition to your own objects, you can insert charts, formulas, and other elements created in other components of OpenOffice.org into pictures. Draw also supports the export of bitmaps in most formats, both common and specialized.

Using the Gallery (object storage) allows you to organize existing images, and support for text styles saves time when making objects of the same type.

The finished drawing or drawing can be printed on a printer or exported to a bitmap image or, for example, to PDF.

The maximum drawing size in Draw is 300x300 cm.

Starting from version 3.0 of OpenOffice.org, Draw supports not only PDF export, but also PDF import (you need to install a special OpenOffice.org extension).

Open relational database Base

Base is an open relational database that allows you to create, edit and process tabular data.

Users are provided with a fairly large set of data and table processing tools: editors of forms, queries, reports, database tables. With their help, you can analyze the input data, do calculations, predict, summarize data from different sheets and tables, build charts and graphs.

The query editor allows you to create almost the entire range of SQL queries to databases for selecting, changing, adding data. Subqueries and queries with parameters are supported. The visual part of the editor will simplify the process of constructing queries for a novice user.

The form editor allows you to use almost any standard database content management tool. It provides controls for text, numeric, binary fields, lists, drop-down lists, tables, buttons, calendar and other elements.

a tool for working with external data sources plus the built-in HSQLDB DBMS. Using Base, you can add, delete, edit database records: MySQL, HSQLDB (usually bundled with OpenOffice.org), PostgreSQL, DB2, Oracle.

It is also possible to work with DBF tables, MS Access, address books, text files, as well as spreadsheets created in OpenOffice.org Calc or MS Excel.

External data sources are accessed using ODBC, JDBC, SDBC, and other technologies. The full list of supported technologies and data sources depends on the operating system you are using.

More complex control and data processing is performed using macros and tools of the OOBasic programming language.

The table editor will help you create and manage tables in the embedded HSQLDB database, and with some possible limitations for other databases.

Base has a built-in report wizard with basic functions for creating reports or tables or queries. But there is a better reporting tool, Sun Report Builder. This tool allows you to create reports of almost any complexity. It supports grouping, inline custom functions, conditional formatting. The result of the SRB is a Writer or Calc document, which can then be printed or edited.

With Base, you can create data sources. For example, by connecting to an external database in Base and filtering the necessary data with an SQL query, you can work with this data in OOo Calc.

Open programming systems

1. free pascal 2.0.4 - Free Pascal and Object Pascal Compiler - Lazarus or KDevelop recommended as IDE.
2. Eclipse- An open complex of open programming systems for the development of modular cross-platform applications.
3. Gambas- free programming system 2) VISUAL BASIC IDE for creating programs based on Qt, GTK, OpenGL, SDL and CGI WEB

Minimum Open Source Package for Schools

Includes open source programs

1. graphic environment XFCE;
2. fast text editor Abiword;
3. Gnumeric spreadsheet editor.

Minimum Open Source software package:

1. Office package: OpenOffice.org 2.3;
2. Web browser: Firefox 2.0;
3. Image editor: GIMP 2.4;

Optional disc Contains programs for schools and other educational institutions:

1. Web page editor bluefish;
2. Programming languages pascal (Free Pascal and Lazarus), basic (gambas), logo (KTurtle);
3. Systems of mathematical calculations (Maxima and Scilab);
4. Antivirus ClamAV and Squid caching server, PostgreSQL DBMS

Optimized for installation and operation on a computer from 128 to 256 MB of memory and a processor from PI 233 MHz.

Linux LiveCD

Linux CD The Live-CD is designed to work with Open Source on Windows home computers without installing Linux on the machine.

CD L inux live cd optimized to work with a Linux installation CD on a computer from 128 to 256 MB of memory and a processor from PI 233 MHz. Work sessions are supported, allowing you to save settings and documents in your home folder between reboots.

The lowest hardware option provides acceptable performance even on systems with 128 MB of memory.

Includes XFCE graphical environment; This distribution includes the lightweight and fast text editor Abiword and the spreadsheet editor Gnumeric.

In addition, the first disc contains:

1. Office suite: OpenOffice.org 2.3;
2. Web browser: Firefox 2.0;
3. Email: Claws Mail;
4. Image manipulation: Gimp 2.4;
5. and more than 1000 programs that allow you to solve the widest range of tasks.

school server

School Server- a server operating system with wide functionality, fully customizable through a web interface through which the components are managed.

Compound:

1. web applications to help organize the educational process:
2. Moodle - distance and interactive learning system, contains examples of courses;
3. Mediawiki - a system for organizing a "knowledge base" using Wiki technology;

for organizing a local network:

1. DHCP and DNS servers;
2. Squid proxy server (with support for displaying access statistics);
3. firewall;
4. network interface management;
5. exact time server;
6. file servers:
7. Samba server (for organizing access to directories accessible via the Samba protocol);
8. FTP server;
9. interface for creating local mirrors of repositories;
10. CUPS print server;
11. MySQL (for Moodle and Mediawiki);
12. web server Apache2;
13. interface for updating the system (including setting up updates);
14. backup;
15. account management (the ability to import accounts from the 1C: Chronograph system);
16. mail server with anti-virus and anti-spam support.

• • HAC, prof., PhD 04:29, July 19, 2009 (UTC)

Open source in Russia

At present, open source software is beginning to become widespread in the education system of Russia, among the reasons for which they name the widespread illegal distribution of commercial closed imported software.

By government decisions, domestic open source software was introduced in 2008 in all schools of the Russian Federation and will be installed in all state and budgetary organizations to ensure national security in the field of IT.

Open source software can be freely installed and used in all schools, offices, universities and on all personal computers and in all state, budgetary and commercial organizations and institutions in Russia and the CIS countries under the General Public License (GPL).

• • HAC, prof., PhD 09:50, July 16, 2009 (UTC)

Open source software in schools and universities

Use of Open Source and Linux Technologies in Moscow schools and universities began in 2005-2006. after holding seminar-schools "Linux Technologies and Open Source Software" together with IBM Corporation and UNESCO on the basis of Moscow State Pedagogical University.

In 2007 By decisions of the Government of the Russian Federation, the basic packages of Open Source were recommended for implementation in all schools in Russia and for use in teaching computer science and information technology in all computer science classrooms of all schools in the Russian Federation.

Background of the base packages computer science programs, their development, implementation and distribution to schools in Russia and the CIS countries began in the late 90s, when the basic software packages were developed for domestic personal computers BK, Corvette and UKNC and distributed in the form of Open and Free Software for schools.

All secondary schools in Russia in 2008-2009 received basic packages of licensed commercial and free open source software for teaching computer literacy, the basics of computer science and new information technologies with Windows and Linux operating systems.

In four regions of Russia in 2008-2009 work was launched on the introduction and use of basic software packages for classrooms of informatics and computer technology in secondary schools, and the training of teachers and teachers of informatics of the technology of working with open software in the Windows and Linux environment began.

According to Doctrine of information security of the Russian Federation, teaching computer literacy and informatics should be accompanied by a legal educational program in teaching the protection of information in computers, protection against computer viruses, porn sites and ensuring information security in local and global computer networks based on free open source software.

In 2007, the first computer science textbooks for universities and schools were published to teach computer science in accordance with state education standards with free open commercial closed software in Windows and Linux.

• • HAC, prof., PhD 09:51, July 16, 2009 (UTC)

Definition of Open Source

Definition of Open Source) is used by the Open Source Initiative to determine the extent to which a software license complies with Open Source Software (Open Source) standards. Based on the Debian Free Software directives, most of which were written by Bruce Perens.

The definition consists of ten license requirements for Open Source:

1. Free distribution. This means that the license should not impose restrictions on the sale and distribution of the software.
2. Available source texts. Even if the software does not come with source code, the source code should be readily available.
3. Possibility of modification. The mere ability to read source texts does not allow experimenting with them and releasing modifications
4. Even in the case of the inviolability of the author's source code, derivative programs and their source code must be freely distributed.
5. No discrimination against people and groups of people. Some countries, such as the United States, have some restrictions on exporting software.
6. No discrimination based on the purpose of application. A free license must allow all activities, including genetic and nuclear research, commercial applications, etc.
7. License Distribution. The rights associated with the Open Source Software shall be applicable to all users of the program without additional agreements, such as non-disclosure agreements.
8. The license must not restrict other software products. With the exception of banal incompatibility, the user has the right to choose what to use.
9. The license must be technology neutral. That is, the license must not require anything from the interface or technologies used in the derivative program.
10. The license must not be tied to a specific product. The rights to the program code should not depend on whether the program is part of a product. A person who distributes the program separately from the collection or transferred part of the code to another product has the same rights as the collection gave.