It’s no lie.  OSS and me are tight.  We’re like this [fingers crossed].  To use a relatively overlooked trendy superlative from a few years ago, OSS is BOSS.

OSS of course stands for Open Source Software.  This is a particular type of free computer software, where the source code (the actual code that constitutes the program) is accessible and free to manipulate and redistribute.  Certainly, the most resounding success of OSS is Mozilla’s suite of programs including Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, and the rest.  These programs, and their contemporaries, depend not on the efforts of a definite group of programmers as software has in the past, but rather on the voluntary participation of a limitless group of users to create, maintain, update, and innovate.

OSS is very much a symptom of the much larger internet trend toward communication, cooperation, and user generated content.  As such, OSS shares many of the strengths and weaknesses of other user generated genres like wikipedia, message boards, and blogs.  The single biggest advantage of these phenomena is their amazing ability to change and adapt.  Needs and news are felt and can be responded to nearly instantaneously.  As any one who has experienced breaking news through the lens of wikipedia, knows, it’s absolutely astonishing how quickly the internet allows information to flow.  The other side of the coin though, is that mistakes can be made.  However, with the proper management, including checks and balances like moderation and “sandboxing,” both malicious and benign mistakes can be kept under control.

The long and short of it is that I am hopelessly and inextricably in love with OSS as you no doubt have already learned as the two programs on which I have produced tutorials are both OSS (The GIMP, and Inkscape).  I also use Firfox (browser), OpenOffice (Word processing and office suite), Filezilla (FTP client), Notepad++ (code editor), and Audacity (audio editor) like I breathe oxygen.  In the web design field, Apache and PHP are both open source projects if you know anything about either of those.  Also, if any of you are looking for a commercial-quality desktop publisher for brochures, flyers, newsletters, etc. you might want to give Scribus a look.  It’s a little clunky to learn, but it’s phenomenally powerful.

Get started by seeing these and other OSSs can help you.