FREE
AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE
Free Software: It means
software is freely accessible, free to use, changed, improved, copied, and
distributed without any payments.
Four kinds of freedom
·
Freedom to run the program for any purpose
·
Freedom to redistribute copies.
·
Freedom to study how the program works
·
Freedom to improve the program and release your
improvements to the public.
Open Source Software:
Definition: The categories of software / programs whose Licenses do not
impose many conditions.
Features:
1. Freedom to run and use the software
2. Modify the program
3. Redistribute copies of either original or modified program (without
paying royalties to previous developers).
It can be freely used for modifications, but it does not have to be
free of charge. Its source code is available.
Criteria for the distribution of open source software
1. Free
distribution
2. Source code
3. Derived works
4. Integrity of the
Author’s Source code
5. No
discrimination against fields of endeavor.
6. Distribution of
License
7. License must not
be specific to a product
8. License must not
restrict other software
FOSS (free and open software):
·
Free software- no payments
·
Open source software- for technical progress OSS
and FLOSS
·
OSS- Source code is available
(Open source modified and redistributed software) free of cost or with
nominal charge.
FLOSS- (free libre and open source software)
FSF (free software foundation)
Founded by Richard
Stallman in 1985 to support GNU project.
Non-profit
organization created for the purpose of supporting free software movement GNU
(free and open source)
Objective: To create
a system compatible to UNIX but not identical with it.
Now it offers a wide
range of software, including applications apart from operating system.
Proprietary software
(neither open nor freely available)
Definition- Its use
is regulated and further distribution and modification is either forbidden or
requires special permission by the supplier. Source code is not available.
Freeware
Free of cost
Copying and further distribution but not
modification.
Source code is not available
E.g. MS IE
Shareware
Right to redistribute copies
After a certain period of time license fee
should be paid.
Source code is not available.
Modifications are not possible.
Objective- to increase user’s will to pay for
the software. Limits functionality after a trial period of 1-3 months.
Some Software’s
LINUX
Linux: - free and open source software.
It can be downloaded from www.linux.org
Linux is a part of popular web server program
LAMP (Linux, apache, MySql, PHP).
Mozilla
Freeware
No source code available
free internet software
It can be downloaded
from www.mozilla.org
Apache Server
The most common web server (or HTTP server)
software on the Internet.
Apache is designed as a set of modules,
enabling administrators to choose which features they wish to use and making it
easy to add features to meet specific needs including handling protocols other
than the web-standard HTTP.
Apache HTTP server is an open source web
server.
It is component of LAMP.
Denial-of-services attacks:
DoS are those attacks that prevent the legal users of System from
accessing or using the resources, information or capabilities of the system. It
may be of following types:
·
Denial of Access to Information: Such attacks
cause deletion or changing of important information to non readable format.
·
Denial of Access to Applications: Such attacks
make the applications unusable or unavailable for legal user of the system.
·
Denial of Access to Communications: Such attacks
includes cutting of communication wire, jamming radio communications, flooding
a system with junk mail.
Threats to network security: It may be of following
types:
a.
Snooping: It refers to unauthorized access to
someone else’s data, email or computer activity.
b.
Eavesdropping: It refers to unauthorized
listening / intercepting someone else’s private communication / data/
information.
Standards: Standards refers to an
established set of rules or requirements which are approved by recognized body
or widely used across various software platforms. For ex.: PDF (Portable documents
format) is a technical standard widely used by the industry.
They are of two types: Proprietary Standards and Open Standards.
Proprietary standards are
those for which users have to buy license to use them.
For e.g. MS Office format .doc, .ppt, .xls etc
Open Standards are
internationally accepted technical standards that guarantee that data can be exchanged
across platforms and for any applications. Open is feely open to all.
Advantages of Open Standards:
i.
Making the data accessible to all.
ii.
It ensures data is application and platform
independence.
iii.
Diversity and Interoperability in the Industry
i.e. it enables business and people to go for any technology of their choice as
per their needs and budget.
E.g.: ASCII Characters, HTML file, Joint Photographic Expert Group,
Portable Network Graphic etc.
Ogg Vorbis:
It is a new audio compression which is open format developed by
Xiph.org. It is roughly comparable to mp3, mpeg-4 formats and is completely
free, open and unpatented. Hence it imposes no restrictions on its usage, types
of usage, distributions, redistribution etc.
Indian Language Computing:
Indian Language computing refers to ability to interact in diverse
Indian language on electronic system.
How to represent character in Memory?
ASCII:
American Standard Code for Information Interchange
is widely used alphanumeric code in most microcomputers and minicomputers and
in many mainframes. It is 7 bit code hence it can represent standard 27=128
characters.
ISCII:
Indian Standard Code for Information
Interchange (ISCII) is an eight bit code capable of coding 256 characters. It
retains all ASCII characters and also offers coding for Indian Scripts. Thus it
is also called as Indian Script code for Information Interchange.
Transliteration:
When we type Indian Language words phonetically
in English script and tool will automatically convert them into corresponding
language words called as transliteration.
Unicode:
Unicode provides a
unique number for every character, no matter what the platforms, no matter what
the program, no matter what the language. Unicode can represent 94140
characters. Unicode standard has incorporated Indian Scripts under the group
named Asian scripts. Indian scripts included as Devnagari, Bengali, Gurumukhi,
Gujarati, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam.
Fonts:
A Font refers to a set of
displayable text characters called glyphs, having specific style and size.
There are two categories of font: True Type Font and Open Type Font.
True Type Font: It is developed by Apple
and licensed to Microsoft. It is 8 bit font which is compatible with Microsoft
Windows and MAC OS.
Open Type Font: It is the
extension of the True Type Font Format which is 16 bits font and support 65536
characters (Unicode characters).
Indian Language Text Entry:
Many Tools / software have been
developed to facilitate the typing of Indian Language text.
There are two types text entries:
i.
Phonetic Text Entry: Words typed as per their
pronunciation in English script and later on converted to Corresponding
(Hindi/Gujarati) language work is known as phonetic text entry.
ii.
Key map based text entry: When you type text
from a keyboard having key mapping of Indian language characters, is known as
key map based text entry.
