Report on Open Source Software

            Open source software is becoming a popular choice of many rapidly. Numerous open source applications can be used. This can be used for several purposes, for instance, accounting, content management, customer relationship management, emailing clients, sharing files, encoding or decoding, and Graphic designing. The advantages of open source are that it is available for use for everyone.

            Moreover, any bugs or operational errors can e fixed by anyone using it. It is a less expensive option. The major advantage of using open source software is that the code can be used and developed further by anyone. This means that there are no issues of formats being incompatible. The disadvantages are that these codes are not easy to work with. Usually, people need a little training before operating these because they are complex. Moreover, there are some hardwires out now that have compatibility issues with open source so this creates a huge problem (Koch, 2013).

            If we need to open source applications for accounting purposes, we can consider a number of options.  Adaptive planning express helps people looking something other than Excel worksheets for work. This helps to overcome the traditional applications and ease the process of businesses related to finance budgeting and forecasting. For cases where the user has little or no information about open source application usages, Buddi is a great application to use. Buddi is an open source application that provides hassle-free budgeting help. To manage the cash flows of a business GnuCash can be used like that too is an open source accounting software. To easily import/export data from other spreadsheets Gnumeric is helpful. In addition to this, it also has features that help to customize the user experience. The benefits of using these open source applications for accounting purposes are that some of the applications can be used by people that do not have an accounting background easily. Moreover, the task of managing the day to day finances of any small business becomes very easy with the help of such open source applications (RAO, 2014). Reduced cost of managing accounts is another advantage also because at times these applications are so user-friendly that there is no need to employee a special person to manage accounts. An example of an open source accounting application is shown below:

            There are open source applications for CRM customer relationship management too. The first ever software that has made the task of storing and managing information about donors and volunteers is CiviCRM. Other open source applications that guarantee efficiency and good relations with customers are Anteil, Daffodil CRM and Hipergate. Graphic designing being one of the important requirements for many people can also be done by using open source applications. Again there are several applications for this purpose too. For 3D animation we can use Blender, for video editing Avidemux can be used, and for coding or script writing purposes Bluefish application can be used. For flowcharts and other graphics features, Flowchart Studio can be used.