Key Open Source Software That Can Boost Business Productivity
Open Source For You|November 2017

It is worthwhile for every business to investigate how best it can leverage the power of open source software to reduce expenses and increase revenues. This article takes a quick look at some of the key open source software that can help an organisation to perform well.

Dr Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya
Key Open Source Software That Can Boost Business Productivity

Businesses that restrict themselves to proprietary software like Microsoft Office get a raw deal. Not only do they have to pay for the software but they have to factor in the cost incurred every time the software becomes corrupt. This includes the fee to be paid to the computer technician to re-install the software. All this creates a vicious cycle, where costs and delays keep mounting. It should be the primary aim of every business to develop a system that automates maintenance to the maximum possible extent.

This is where open source software like LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice, Scribus, GIMP, Inkscape, Firefox, Thunderbird, WordPress, VLC media player, etc, come in. My company, MultiSpectra Consultants, uses open source software to the maximum possible extent, thereby streamlining business processes. It makes updating the software and its maintenance very easy. The required software can be freely downloaded from the Internet and updates can also be applied by simply downloading the latest version of the relevant software.

With free and open source software (FOSS) anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software. This is in contrast to proprietary software, for which the software is under restrictive copyright and the source code is usually hidden from the users. The benefits of using FOSS include lower software costs, higher security and stability (especially with regard to malware), better privacy protection and more control over the hardware.

So let’s take a brief look at some of the key open source software.

LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice

This story is from the November 2017 edition of Open Source For You.

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This story is from the November 2017 edition of Open Source For You.

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