TOSS Foundation.org

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Welcome to TOSS Foundation

The Texas Open Source Software Foundation is an organization aimed at promoting and supporting the use of Open Source Software for PCs and Macs in educational institutions and the workplace. At the heart of the "Why use Open Source Software" is the issue of recognizing knowledge as a freedom, and understanding that software code is very similar to a mathematical equation (who "owns" A=πr^2?) or even a cooking recipe (who can't freely mix ingredients?). Unlike Open Source software, Proprietary software capitalizes on non-sharing, has a litigious nature, and keeps the human-readable source code hidden from software users that have the training and desire to tweak the software code they work with.

There are many sites that argue both sides of the software issue. Mathew Barr offers a good perspective in his Open Source versus Proprietary Software discussion, while Open Options shows a different perspective.

Helpful bullets:

  • Intimatelly associated with Open Source software are a series of programs that are interactive in nature, and go beyond the one way communication that the early web applications offered.They are collectivelly known as Web 2.0 Applications. Use the link on the right to explore them.
  • Open Source Software and Free Software are different, even when the source code is available from both. Free software (such as Adobe Reader) that doesn't share the source code, is naturally not Open Source.

Open Source Video Solutions

Avidemux a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding Cinelerra a movie studio in a box; FFMpeg a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video; Jahshaka lets you edit with flexibility and speed, create effects in real time, animate with unlimited features, paint and design on moving video, create music with all the tools the pros use and work in any format at any resolution; and Lives  a video editing system. There are also many Open Source graphical applications.