As I write this article, the April 15 tax filing deadline is hanging over my head. As one who is easily distracted from distasteful tasks (and few tasks are as distasteful as calculating how much the government is going to pillage from my checking account), I decided to see what open-source software is available to help me. It's not that I'm unhappy with my current human software (the animated, heuristic processor known as MyCPA) but that I'm always interested in what the open-source community may be brewing. The only slightly interesting tax project that I found on FreshMeat is called OpenTaxSolver, and it appears to be an extreme minimalist's tax program. Certainly, it is nothing to compete with the likes of TurboTax (yet), so once again I'll be writing an additional tax-related check this year for MyCPA.
A Common Misconception
If you happen to be one of those individuals who relies on TurboTax to extricate yourself from the ridiculous morass known as "the tax code," then you have tied yourself to the Windows operating system. And that's fine; you should pick your applications first and then build a system with the environment required to run it. (In this case, I use environment instead of operating system so as to include any hardware requirements along with the operating system requirements.) If you use TurboTax and Windows, have you excluded yourself from using open-source software? Absolutely not!
The problem (if you can call it that) is that Linux has been getting huge amounts of press of late. Not only are the technical and trade journals gushing over its possibilities, but so are the business-related publications. Think I'm kidding? A quick Google search on the terms "wall street journal linux" turned up "about 105,000" results. A similar search on "investors business daily linux" returned a mere 104,000. Although I haven't personally examined each of the 209,000 results listed (some of which may reference the same article), I can reasonably say that the vast majority of these articles will somewhere contain within the phrase "open source," giving the impression that Linux and open source are inextricably linked. While it is true that Linux is forever bound to open source, open source is not bound to Linux. The common misconception that they are one and the same may be what has kept you from looking at open-source software. I know many of my clients were surprised to find that they could use open source without setting up a Linux server.
Opening Closed Source
One of the most celebrated members of the open-source community is the Apache Web server. This software powers the majority of the Internet's Web sites by a three-to-one margin over the number two Web server, provided by Microsoft. Although your Windows servers all come afflicted with Internet Information Services (IIS), you can take the Gartner Group's advice and replace IIS with another Web server, like Apache. It is available as a binary for Windows, complete with the Microsoft installer, MSI. The result is a Web server that runs as a Windows service, as IIS does. You don't need Windows server versions to run Apache; the workstation editions of NT/2000/XP will do just fine.
In previous articles, I have mentioned LAMP, an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python. Many common open-source Web-based software projects are based on these components. There is no reason, however, that you can't implement WAMP, substituting Windows for Linux. Apache was already mentioned as being available for the Windows platform. MySQL, one of the popular open-source database management systems, is too. The three P's (PHP, Perl, and Python) are interpreted languages that are commonly used for generating dynamic pages within HTML documents or for general-purpose programming. The interpreters for these languages have been ported to Windows, so you can complete your WAMP system in short order. Once your WAMP server is operational, you have a plethora of excellent open-source software available to satisfy your needs without draconian license agreements to cause you grief.
Open Source: Not Just for Servers Anymore
So far I have discussed open source and Windows servers. There is plenty of good open-source software for your desktop computers, too. The most obvious example is Open Office (OO), which for many people is a reasonable replacement for the Microsoft Office suite. Lest you think that OO is a newcomer to this market, consider that its heritage is Star Office (SO), a product still available from Sun Systems. In fact, Sun opened its source code to Star Office between SO 5.2 and SO 6. Star Office 7 (the current release) is essentially Open Office, with significantly improved import/export filters for Microsoft Office documents. Open Office is completely free, but if you need the improved filters, you can always purchase Star Office for less than $100 per license. That's much less expensive than the "real thing." As an added bonus, both SO and OO can produce PDF documents without relying on third-party software. So the savings are compounded.
Have a need to edit photos or create graphics but no money to buy Adobe Photoshop? Need a custom button for a Web page or a nice logo? Try the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP ) before you reach for your wallet. This program is an amazingly powerful image editor that can take care of many of your graphics needs. Through the clever use of scripts (in a language called, of all things, Script-Fu), you can make yourself appear to be quite an artist, creating exciting images with just a few clicks. Like its commercial counterpart, the GIMP is not as simple to use as the ubiquitous MS Paint program, but there are books available that will make you a black belt in Script-Fu in a short amount of time. The GIMP is included with virtually all modern Linux distributions, and it is now available to Windows (and Max OSX) users, too. Just visit the site and download and install the software.
Popping Up Everywhere
It doesn't matter how adamant you are about insisting on proprietary software. It doesn't matter how strident the tone of the proprietary vendors become. Open-source software is appearing everywhere. Like TiVo? It's running Linux. Like Linksys (Cisco) products? Some of them run Linux. Those and many more examples of embedded systems are all running Linux. That little penguin--and the movement it represents--is insinuating itself everywhere.
I encourage you to consider open-source alternatives whenever you have a problem that needs a software solution. So much of what was once the domain of Linux and UNIX servers has been ported to the Windows platform, thus opening an entirely new crowd of users to those products. At the same time, many talented individuals who now have access to open-source software contribute back to the community, further improving the programs.
I would expect that in the not-too-distant future, many job openings will list experience with open-source software as one of the requirements. The education cost for open source has always been cheap, if not free. Now the potential audience has opened up, too.
Barry L. Kline is a consultant and has been developing software on various DEC and IBM midrange platforms for over 20 years. Barry discovered Linux back in the days when it was necessary to download diskette images and source code from the Internet. Since then, he has installed Linux on hundreds of machines, where it functions as servers and workstations in iSeries and Windows networks. He also co-authored the book Understanding Linux Web Hosting with Don Denoncourt. Barry can be reached at
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