Open Office.org running on Mac OSX

The success of the Apache Web server, which is used on 70% of Web Servers, underscores the growing influence of the open source movement in software development.

This has wide ranging implications for traditional software companies such as Microsoft, which may worry that users will abandon their more expensive commercial products and switch to free or inexpensive open-source alternatives.

The basis behind open source software is that the source code is freely available and anyone can improve upon it. Many of you may have never heard of this term but most of you would recognise some of the software that is open source.

Mozilla Firefox is a free open source web browser that is rapidly taking more and more market share away from the technologically inferior Internet Explorer.

There are open source alternatives to most Microsoft products, with OpenOffice.org offering a great free office package which is compatible with all office formats and is a great money saver for students, as Microsoft Office can cost hundreds of pounds.

Switching to open source not only saves students money but much of the software is actually better. For example, Firefox is a more secure web browser and reduces the risk of spyware.

Ubuntu - One of the best known versions of Linux

Linux is open source’s answer to Windows. Linux itself is just a code base and distributions are built upon it, Ubuntu and Redhat being the most widely used operating system.

Redhat Linux runs more of the world’s web servers than anything else. This is due to its stability and the fact that it is free. It is only now with faster internet connections that Linux is really spreading, as disk images can be downloaded and burnt to a CD in less than an hour.

This dominance is moving into the desktops and laptops and students could really benefit. Microsoft Windows is very expensive, whereas Ubuntu is free and is perfect for older laptops that are simply not powerful enough to run the newer versions of Windows.

Open source software is a real money saver for students rather than relying on pirate software or paying high license fees. It is the way forward.

The recent One Laptop Per Child Project uses Linux to provide computers to the third world so they can join the information age, for the cost of just $100 (£50).