I'm seeing people mention applications they've used and recommend but the recommendations are buried deep into other threads so I thought starting a top level thread for recommendations might be useful.
Christie Mason
Christie Mason
Posts made by Christie Mason
Oh, oh into our discussion of apples (opensource) and oranges (shareware/freeware) has now come some tomatoes (I don't think it has a catchy name beside free ASPs - Application Service Providers).
Many podcasting sites, some blog sites, some vlbogs sites, youtube.com, myspace.com are not open source, they're not shareware/freeware, so what are they? They are services running on a proprietary framework that are offered for free. You can't change the code, only the content. Some of those content changes allow you to personalize your interactions, but you can't actually go in and copy/change the code and run it on a different site.
Another addition to the discussion would be mashups. Those are open APIs (Application Programming Interface) that allow you to integrate content from external sites to display content on your site. The usual example is the mashup up Craigslist and Google maps http://news.com.com/2061-10803_3-5687691.html
Just as there are now free blog aggregator sites, like bloglines.com, I think that in the next couple of years we'll see the beginnings of mashup aggragator sites that offer services to integrate content from several sites to display rich information. There are still some pesky security problems to overcome, but that's one of the promises of Web 2.0.
Christie Mason
Many podcasting sites, some blog sites, some vlbogs sites, youtube.com, myspace.com are not open source, they're not shareware/freeware, so what are they? They are services running on a proprietary framework that are offered for free. You can't change the code, only the content. Some of those content changes allow you to personalize your interactions, but you can't actually go in and copy/change the code and run it on a different site.
Another addition to the discussion would be mashups. Those are open APIs (Application Programming Interface) that allow you to integrate content from external sites to display content on your site. The usual example is the mashup up Craigslist and Google maps http://news.com.com/2061-10803_3-5687691.html
Just as there are now free blog aggregator sites, like bloglines.com, I think that in the next couple of years we'll see the beginnings of mashup aggragator sites that offer services to integrate content from several sites to display rich information. There are still some pesky security problems to overcome, but that's one of the promises of Web 2.0.
Christie Mason
Agreed and that's why I won't even consider buying a product unless there's a free trial of some type. I'm amazed at how many large fee applications (especially in the training industry), are able to sell their product w/o offering free trial versions and their sites give less info about their products and company than even the most bare bones OSS/free products.
Christie Mason
Christie Mason
Free. It's a magical word. But OSS isn't the only type of software that's free. There are free PHP & ASP scripts all over the place, which by their nature include source code. There is free shareware which may/may not include source code.
Christie Mason
Christie Mason
I have never had to manually change so many configuration files as I have with recently installing several open source applications. Thank goodness for Google because the installation instructions that came with the applications, if any, were less than complete.
I suspect that those who find open source easy are either installing onto clean, non MS, machines. Or, they're using open source applications hosted remotely by an ASP (Application Service Provider).
Christie Mason
I suspect that those who find open source easy are either installing onto clean, non MS, machines. Or, they're using open source applications hosted remotely by an ASP (Application Service Provider).
Christie Mason