In the first part of this series, we take a look at the most prominent open source projects that have affected the computing landscape.
A free browser descended from the Mozilla Suite, Firefox has become the most famous example of open source success. The browser that managed to capture the most market share in the internet browser market out of all challengers to Internet Explorer- a whopping 20%, Firefox boasts standards compliancy, greater security, and functionality over its rivals.
Perhaps its most interesting feature is its wide availability of plugins, allowing users to add and subtract functionality to their browser, from integration with Flickr and del.ic.ous, ad blocking, and additional tab functionality.
The most recent version to come out, Firefox 3, was released for download on June 17, 2008, in an event called Download Day. Firefox has managed to set a Guinness record of over 8 million downloads in 24 hours.
Python was released by Guido van Rossum in 1991, and its development is highly community oriented. The programming language evolved to fit the needs of its users. It is completely object-oriented, providing a core that is comprehensive in functionality and third-party modules to add additional functionality.
Python's philosophy is in open flexibility, hence even its programming style is so open for experimentation that different developers often have very different ways of structuring and organizing their code.
Python has exploded in use in commercial programs, especially games: EVE Online, Battlefield 2, and Civilization 4 all use Python as scripting languages.
Wikipedia is an open content encyclopedia available for free online. It was launched in 2001 and has since become the world's most popular reference point, attracting over 600 million visitors per day.
Wikipedia is a collaborative work, allowing all visitors to look up and edit its articles. As such, certain sensitive articles may be biased as areas of contention, but overall Wikipedia is a astoundingly exhaustive source covering all sorts of subjects.
Linux refers to the group of open-source operating systems running on the Linux Kernel. All source code can be freely modified and redistributed by anyone. Linux has become a niche alternative to the Windows operating system, having a huge number of forks. Among the most prominent are Ubuntu, Debian, and Red Hat.
Beyond personal computing, Linux operating systems have also found their way into mobile phones, supercomputers, servers, and embedded devices.
Besides Firefox, Mozilla is also known for developing Thunderbird, a email-client and newsfeed reader. Thunderbird is available for multiple platforms, from Unix Systems to Mac OSX and Windows.
Thunderbird, like its cousin Firefox, also has an impressive array of extensions and themes. Users can customize Thunderbird functionality to a great extent.
Thunderbird also has IMAP and POP support.