Use
of freeware in business has been a contentious issue,
concerns have been raised over reliability, commercial
support, and total cost of ownership (that often cited,
but rarely used buying criteria). Recently these have
been addressed by large players entering the market, pouring
huge investment into freeware generation and support,
particularly with respect to Linux. So how has freeware
fared in business – how many people are using it, and
how successful has it been? – Use has been very difficult
to determine, although there are shipments of bundled
configurations of Linux, these can be deployed any number
of times, and all freeware can be downloaded at will from
the Internet anyway. In fact it appears to have been deployed
everywhere, from IT departments using without the need
for capital investment, in supercomputers for numerical
analysis, on mainframes for reliability in web commerce,
to embedding in consumer electronic devices to reduce
cost of production. Here we will look at one example,
the use of freeware within Interchange Group.
Interchange
first became involved with freeware shortly after
acquiring a connection to the Internet. At the time
a company called Demon Internet had pioneered mass
connection to the Internet by enlisting 100 companies
to commit to an annual fee for dialup connection,
a facility previously only available to large business
and academic institutions. Initially installed as
a dialup connection on the Technical Director’s
PC for email and web access, it quickly became apparent
what practical benefits could be realised by enabling
the same level of access for the entire company.
Interchange Group’s Technical Director, Barry Fairburn,
set about preparing the infrastructure by enabling
email and web access for all personnel. At the time
PC use was still in the minority with most system
access still via green screen dumb terminal. To
fully leverage the benefits of email, access would
have to be universal.
PCs
would not be a problem. Two freeware packages were available
which would do the job, Eudora and Pegasus, using standard
SMTP and POP3 open protocols the existing unix servers
could easily manage the mail handling using Berkeley sendmail
software – almost universally deployed. Pegasus was chosen
as the preferred PC email client. For the green screen
users three principal options existed; conventional command
line mail, or the more sophisticated screen based systems
of ELM and PINE. Ease of use and complexity varied between
these, but all were inter-operable so the choice could
be left to the individual user. All of this software was
available freely from the Internet, and at no cost to
the business – a trend that was to continue. (Pegasus,
although freeware is not source available in the same
way as GPL licenced software – for clarification on the
different types of freeware, see the Interchange white
paper.)
Ok,
so email was now fully available to internal staff,
a powerful mechanism for reducing paper administration,
but what about external access to customers and
suppliers? (At that time only the largest businesses
had access to email – and not generally available
even for employees of these companies, so the
benefit was not as clear as it is today). The
software supplied by Demon was single PC oriented
and not suitable – but there was a key strength
– Demon supported full access to the Internet
and all it’s protocols – including SMTP (Simple
Mail Transport Protocol) – this we could use.Berkeley
sendmail would do the email routing ok, but we’d
need a unix to sit it on.
Enter
Linux...
For
the cost of a cheap PC we could set up a dedicated unix
server to route email. The network connection could
be managed by a piece of freeware called “diald” that
could periodically connect to Demon via a modem to establish
a PPP session. A compact distribution of Linux called
“Slackware” was used as the base. It worked.
Next
problem, how to give web access to these now email enabled
users (remember still mainly green screen operators).
The web browser Mosaic had been around for a while,
and Netscape had arrived, now making ground with increasing
functionality. Fortunately there were options, we were
far from the only ones in this position, despite what
was forming the “web”, Tim Berners Lee’s original concepts
and technology had arisen in the green screen environment
– the protocols were supported and software existed.
A freeware web browser called “Lynx” that supported
dumb terminals was downloaded and made available to
staff without PCs.
A
freeware proxy server from CERN completed the connection.
The “diald” software supported dial-on-demand, so through
a single phone line all our staff now had email and
web access !!!
We’re
on a roll now, next stage was an Intranet. All our users
now had browser access, so we could use web technology
to deliver information. Easily achieved using a freeware
web server called “Apache”. (Still the most used web
server on the Internet).
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2001 - 2008 Interchange Group Limited - All Rights Reserved
