Small Business Software
Doghouse – Economics

An affordable open source POS/ERP system has many potential benefits for small businesses.
My entire professional career has been coupled with what we now call open source or free software. Whether it be software written by users and donated to user groups like DECUS or SHARE, or the Unix system (not really free in any sense), which eventually led to BSD and GNU/Linux, I always appreciated access to the source code so I could get my solutions to work. It is somewhat gratifying that companies that once wailed about free software being communistic are now embracing it and hoping to have "unity" with the FOSSH community (while still making money for their stockholders).
Another thing I've seen happening over more than 25 years is that the number of FOSSH developers has increased from 130,000 (the first time I tallied it up) to millions of developers with hundreds of thousands of projects. Even large commercial companies are using FOSSH to develop products, which creates many good products at a lower cost with even greater profits for their stockholders.
In the past year, there has been a pandemic (you may have noticed), and many small restaurants, bars, hotels, and stores have closed. While we do not yet know how many small businesses will go under due to the pandemic, we can only hope that many are able to continue on and that eventually many new small businesses will emerge. One thing we do know is that successful small businesses are good for the economy.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.