The Open Source Advantage

What is the open source free software advantage? It is the power of open versus closed.

It's the difference between, in proprietary software, locking down the code in secrecy and obscurity, grabbing some market share, and resting on one's laurels (and maybe forcing people to do a bunch of expensive minor upgrades) and, in open source free software, continually working to improve the software and only getting paid for services directly provide to the client.

The former sounds a lot easier and more profitable, doesn't it? The latter is better for you, the recipient, but why would we, the producer, choose it? Well, aside from commitment to the principle that information should be available for the benefit of all people, small operations in particular have a practical interest in using open source free software to serve clients.

The point of legally locking down proprietary code is to create a barrier to entry for other firms. This excludes smaller companies and organizations that often would be better at providing service and solutions. Open source removes this barrier to entry.

In Agaric's case, we don't have to build the software that meets your needs from scratch. We build on world-class state-of-the-art software developed, tested, and used by a global community.

The group of core contributors can be quite small for some open source projects, yet open source free software already dominates in some of the most demanding functions, in particular on the Internet.

Google runs on open source. Yes, they keep their software and search algorithm secret, but do you know how the Internet is indexed constantly and your search is processed instantly? On computer after computer running Linux.

Most of the web sites you may then visit from the search results are served up by Apache, another rock solid open source free software project.

Very many of the sites you visit that are dynamic (that are capable of interacting with you) run an open source scripting language called PHP, very likely communicating with an open source database named MySQL.

So you can see that even if we were to build your web site with our or other people's closed-source products, we would be relying on open source free software, just as you do every day.

But we do not build web sites with closed code. We do not go the closed-source route because we don't believe in turning our back on a community that works to make the world better every day. And we don't believe in shooting ourselves in the foot.

Open source free software is simply the better solution – for society and for the future, but for the best web site for your money, odds are open source is also the best solution for you right now.

You don't need to know any of this to request, use, and enjoy your web site. That's why our explanation of the open source advantage is in the "About Agaric" section.

But if you've read this far, you probably want to know a little about the open source free software that enables us to give you so much at such low cost.

WordPress, the premiere open source blogging platform, appears to have overtaken its commercial rivals in popularity. It is also well-suited for personal sites and basic commercial sites.

Drupal is increasingly used by web sites "from all walks of life," and is quite simply the most flexible, extendable content management system available for any price.

CiviCRM can handle sophisticated contact management tasks – they call it a Constituent Relationship Manager – that used to be the exclusive domain of software with asking prices in the tens of thousands of dollars. With custom modifications (some of which were incorporated into the next version of the software, for that is the nature of open source), CiviCRM handled a 2.4 million person voter database in Oregon.

We are damned proud to be a small part of the use and development of these software projects, and we are very happy to bring their power, flexibility, stability, and low-cost to the meeting of your needs. That's the open source free software advantage.