OSS - what is it?

[mooro]

In your introduction to CMS you suddenly mention OSS (Open sourse software) as if it was important but for no apparent reason. You then don't seem to mention it again.

What is OSS and what has it got to do with CMS?

[rolygate]

Sorry!

Yes there are a lot of acronyms and trade terms in this subject. There is a list of them because that is an obvious problem - see the pages CMS terms on the CMS Index page.

OSS or open source software is very important here because many users choose this option. To be honest I don't know if more people use OSS than commercial software but I would think so. Anyway, it's hugely important to many of us because the commercial sector is not a cheap option if you need to set up a CMS website.

Free software is the way to go if you are on a low budget, which in this game is anything under about £3000 / $6000. If you are coming to this new, then you may have the impression that free software is a second-class option, but this is entirely wrong in Internet software. It's often better than the commercial stuff. For instance Firefox browser is way ahead of the usual choice which costs, as part of the usual PC operating system; Linux is a very good OS and many would say better than its main commercial rival (though it doesn't have the software choice but that is another matter). Apache server is the basis of the Internet and that, along with its partners on a server like PHP and MySQL, is of course OSS.

A lot of very bright people contribute to OSS so you can't dismiss it. As far as CMS goes a lot of the first choice apps would be OSS. You have to pay a lot to get anything similar.