LibreOffice uses its own format (ODF, which is the UK Government's preferred option for editable office documents), but it can also open and save Microsoft Office formats, so you can collaborate with colleagues who are still using Microsoft Office (though you may have to save the document in the Microsoft format-Microsoft's support for ODF in different versions of Word is variable). With LibreOffice, this issue would not arise-when you need to buy expensive textbooks, spending even £70 on a student edition of Microsoft Office is not viable. It is completely free, which is important if you are trying to cut costs as a student-a friend of mine had to buy a new copy of Microsoft Office when she got a new laptop because she couldn't transfer her existing copy across. This includes, among other things, a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation program, and is a good alternative to Microsoft Office. My first experience in using FOSS was with an office software package called LibreOffice. FOSS is a key part of modern IT systems-Google and Amazon run their services on FOSS, the addressing system for the Internet (DNS) is FOSS, and the UK Government has recently selected a FOSS format (ODF) as its preferred format for editable documents.
Free software and open source software are similar, but the main distinction between them is that amended versions of free software must be distributed under the same license, while amended versions of open source software can be distributed under a different, non open source license. There is so much FOSS available that this article only scratches the surface, but hopefully it will give some initial pointers to readers with an academic background but no previous experience of FOSS.įirst, a simplified definition: FOSS is software that the user can copy, amend and distribute without getting special permission, and (in almost all cases) costs nothing to buy or use. I use Ubuntu Linux, which is a FOSS operating system, but the software discussed in this article is multi-platform in other words, it will also run on Apple Mac OSX or Microsoft Windows.
This article provides an overview of free and open source software (FOSS) that may be of use to students and researchers in academia, based on my own experience in psychology studies.
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