OStatic

Over the last few years, two dominant open source business models have emerged: Charge for service and support, or release the software under a dual license. EnterpriseDB, with Oracle-compatible database servers based on PostgreSQL, offers a third approach: Embrace and support the open source community, while charging for proprietary, highly-valued extensions. Today, in an announcement at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco, the company announced that IBM is taking a stake in it, and more.

Someone was recently asking me which open source applications I would recommend to a business user who doesn't want to spend any money for a full set of individual applications or bog down a business with expensive licensing fees. In this post, I'll round up six free applications for doing everything from word processing to online meetings--with panache. You'll find a few open source applications here and also some freeware offerings, because I'm a firm believer that if a freeware app wins, it wins.