Python en:Appendix FLOSS

Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS)

FLOSS is based on the concept of a community, which itself is based on the concept of sharing, and particularly the sharing of knowledge. FLOSS are free for usage, modification and redistribution.

If you have already read this book, then you are already familiar with FLOSS since you have been using Python all along and Python is an open source software!

Here are some examples of FLOSS to give an idea of the kind of things that community sharing and building can create:

• Linux. This is a FLOSS operating system that the whole world is slowly embracing! It was started by Linus Torvalds as a student. Now, it is giving competition to Microsoft Windows. [ Linux Kernel ]
• Ubuntu. This is a community-driven distribution, sponsored by Canonical and it is the most popular Linux distribution today. It allows you to install a plethora of FLOSS available and all this in an easy-to-use and easy-to-install manner. Best of all, you can just reboot your computer and run Linux off the CD! This allows you to completely try out the new OS before installing it on your computer. [ Ubuntu Linux ]
• OpenOffice.org. This is an excellent office suite with a writer, presentation, spreadsheet and drawing components among other things. It can even open and edit MS Word and MS PowerPoint files with ease. It runs on almost all platforms. [ OpenOffice ]
• Mozilla Firefox. This is the next generation web browser which is giving great competition to Internet Explorer. It is blazingly fast and has gained critical acclaim for its sensible and impressive features. The extensions concept allows any kind of plugins to be used.
• Its companion product Thunderbird is an excellent email client that makes reading email a snap. [ Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird ]
• Mono. This is an open source implementation of the Microsoft .NET platform. It allows .NET applications to be created and run on Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, Mac OS and many other platforms as well. [ Mono, ECMA, Microsoft .NET ]
• Apache web server. This is the popular open source web server. In fact, it is the most popular web server on the planet! It runs nearly more than half of the websites out there. Yes, that's right - Apache handles more websites than all the competition (including Microsoft IIS) combined. [ Apache ]
• MySQL. This is an extremely popular open source database server. It is most famous for it's blazing speed. It is the M in the famous LAMP stack which runs most of the websites on the internet. [ MySQL ]
• VLC Player. This is a video player that can play anything from DivX to MP3 to Ogg to VCDs and DVDs to ... who says open source ain't fun? ;-) [ VLC media player ]
• GeexBox is a Linux distribution that is designed to play movies as soon as you boot up from the CD! [ GeexBox ]

This list is just intended to give you a brief idea - there are many more excellent FLOSS out there, such as the Perl language, PHP language, Drupal content management system for websites, PostgreSQL database server, TORCS racing game, KDevelop IDE, Xine - the movie player, VIM editor, Quanta+ editor, Banshee audio player, GIMP image editing program, ... This list could go on forever.

To get the latest buzz in the FLOSS world, check out the following websites:

• linux.com
• LinuxToday
• NewsForge
• DistroWatch

Visit the following websites for more information on FLOSS:

• SourceForge
• FreshMeat

So, go ahead and explore the vast, free and open world of FLOSS!