The Free Software Foundation (
www·fsf·org
) is the principal sponsor of the GNU
Project. Most of the UNIX commands and utilities included in Linux that were not closely
associated with the kernel were produced under the umbrella of the GNU Project.
The Mozilla project's (
www·mozilla·org
) first major Web browser product was
Mozilla Navigator, which was originally based on code released to the open source com-
munity from Netscape Communicator. Other open source browsers incorporate Mozilla's
engine. The Mozilla project also offered a suite of related Internet clients that included
e-mail, composer, IRC Chat, and address book software. New software development
from the Mozilla project focuses on the Thunderbird e-mail and news client and Firefox
Web browser, which have seen enormous success on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X
platforms in the past few years. The old Mozilla suite is offered today under the name
Seamonkey (
www·mozilla·org/projects/seamonkey
).
The Samba Project (
www·samba·org
) provides software for sharing files and printers
using CIFS and SMB clients. These protocols are the most common means of sharing files
and printers with Microsoft Windows operating systems.
The Sendmail Consortium (
www·sendmail·org
) maintains the sendmail mail trans-
port agent, which is the world's most popular software for transporting mail across the
Internet.
There are, of course, many more open source projects and organizations that provide software
included in various Linux distributions, but the ones discussed here will give you a good feel for
the kind of organizations that produce open source software.
Linux in the Real World
To see how Linux and related free and open source software is being used today in the real world,
I've provided some short examples that relate to Linux use in schools, small business, and enter-
prise venues.
Linux in Schools
Cost savings, flexibility, and a huge pool of applications have made Linux a wonderful alternative
to proprietary systems for many schools. One project has been particularly successful in schools:
the K12 Linux Terminal Server Project (
www·k12ltsp·org
).
K12LTSP is based on the Linux Terminal Service Project (
www·ltsp·org
) and Fedora
(
www·fedoraproject·org
), but is tuned to work particularly in schools. With K12LTSP, you
centralize all your school's applications on one or more server machines. Then you can use low-
end PCs (old Pentiums or thin clients) as workstations. With thin clients starting under $200 or
old PCs already hanging around your school, you can service a whole class or even a whole
school for little more than the cost of the servers and some networking hardware.
20
Linux First Steps
Part I
