Many Virtual Assistants start their businesses on shoe-string budgets. If you know about free and open source software solutions, it can not only save you money but also save your clients money as well.

What is Free and Open Source Software? 

Free and Open Source Software have different licenses in place than commercial software. Free Software and Open Source Software differ in their licensing as well. Open Source Software is licensed so the source can be read, redistributed and modified. People can improve it, adapt it, and fix bugs which gives us better software quicker. Software under a Free software license may be free for you to download, use and redistribute, but the source code may not be avaliable for modification. Free and Open Source software is different than freeware (zero price) and shareware.

Check out the Open Source Advocacy site for more information.

What does this mean to you? Why should you care?

• You save money! There are high quality software programs out there available at no cost to you that work just as well as (sometimes better than) software you pay hundreds of dollars to use. You also do not have to pay for upgrades or updates.
• You save time! Some of the programs I will share with you will save you time as well – increasing your productivity, making tasks easier, and giving you opportunities to grow your business or take a nap.
• Freedom! On the Internet, there are many open source solutions. If you begin working in one solution and it doesn’t quite meet your need, you have so many more options than you would with a commercial solution. You are free to make changes to the source code yourself, or if you aren’t a techie / programmer type of person, you can hire someone to make changes for you. Commercial solutions are typically closed-source which means only a very few elite programmers can make any changes.

Open source solutions are out there for millions of programmers to see and use every day. These programmers can easily make changes, adjustments and custimizations for you – and you have the freedom to choose the programmer to deal with! Not to mention that the competition out there between programmers for open source brings the price down considerably than what you might have to pay to get a commercial solution customized.

I’ll be sharing information about specific Free and/or Open Source Software (FOSS) that can benefit Virtual Assistants. Stay tuned for software recommendations!

Lisa B.
Open Source Maven
WordPress Maven <– Coming Soon!