Free and open source software or F/OSS is software that is developed by a community of programmers from around the world. F/OSS has a number of advantages over proprietary or closed source software including the ability to modify the source code of the program, little to no upfront cost and simple licensing terms. Examples of F/OSS include Linux, Mozilla Firefox, Open Office and the Joomla! content management system.

Total Cost of Ownership

When you buy proprietary software you pay for a license to use the software; that means you pay the developers of the software to allow you to use the software, not to own it. They still own it, can change it at any time without warning and can stop you using it if they feel you are not using it the way they want you to.

Free and Open Source software on the other hand is owned by you so you can improve and modify it to your business needs. And provided you don't resell the software to others, you can keep those changes to yourself although we do encourage any modifications and improvements to be donated back to the original developers.

The other benefit of Free and Open Source; it's most often free or sold at very competitive prices. In fact, in many cases, the cost of installing, configuring and maintaining Free and Open Source software is less than the licensing cost of the equivalent proprietary product.

We know open source because we participate

Wijiti is an active participant in the F/OSS community, providing feedback to various open source projects and developing various software solutions that invoke free and open source licensing agreements. At Wijiti we believe in F/OSS not only in principle but in practice as it enables businesses to customize software to their specific needs, because we believe software should be tailored to the business and not the other way round.