The Open Source Office

Can you run an entire office using only Open Source Software? Yes! Here are some of the many freely-available products that manage all of your Information Technology services.

Of course, there are many versions of Desktop Linux and Open Source Databases available. They can provide the basis of a networked Information System for any business. In addition, there are E-Mail servers, the Apache web server, Content Management systems, Project Management tools, and even IP Telephony products.

• Sendmail — The original message transfer agent (MTA) for UNIX, now over ten years old.
• qmail — qmail is a secure, reliable, efficient, simple message transfer agent. It is meant as a replacement for the entire sendmail-binmail system on typical Internet-connected UNIX hosts.
• Postfix — Postfix attempts to be fast, easy to administer, and secure, while at the same time being sendmail compatible enough to not upset existing users. Thus, the outside has a sendmail-ish flavor, but the inside is completely different.

• Apache — The Apache HTTP Server Project is an effort to develop and maintain an open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows NT. Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April of 1996. The October 2003 Netcraft Web Server Survey found that more than 64% of the web sites on the Internet are using Apache, thus making it more widely used than all other web servers combined.

• Plone — a user friendly and powerful Content Management System.
• Owl — is a multi user document repository (knowledgebase) system written in PHP4 for publishing files/documents onto the web for a corporation, small business, group of people, or just for yourself.
• Midgard integrates world's most popular Open Source web development tools — MySQL, Apache and PHP — providing an environment for deploying powerful Internet based content management solutions.

• GForge is an Open Source collaborative software development tool, which allows you to organize and manage any number of software development projects. It's perfect for managing large teams of software engineers and/or engineers scattered among multiple locations.
• NetOffice Project Management — Web based project management

Asterisk: An Open-Source PBX Gateway —PC Magazine, June 7, 2004 Asterisk provides most features of traditional PBXs, such as voice mail services, call conferencing, ACD (Automatic Call Distribution), and IVR (Interactive Voice Response), to name just a few. In addition, it can handle call queuing, bridging, and conference calling with the use of virtual conference rooms.

• Asterisk, The Open Source Linux PBX — Asterisk is a complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX and more. Asterisk does voice over IP (VOIP) in three protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware.
• OpenH323 — The OpenH323 project aims to create a full featured, interoperable, Open Source implementation of the ITU-T H.323 teleconferencing protocol that can be used by personal developers and commercial users without charge.
• HylaFAX is an enterprise-class system for sending and receiving facsimiles as well as for sending alpha-numeric pages. Fax modems may reside on a single machine on a network and clients can submit an outbound job from any other machine on the network.
• Linmodems.org — Winmodem support for Linux