At Wardworth we have an ongoing commitment to the open source community.

Our web servers run the Linux operating system with the Apache web server. We develop our web sites using the MySQL database and the open source PHP programming language. A large part of our e-commerce offering is based on the OS Commerce open source platform and numerous community contributed modules and plug ins. We have started to make more use of the Mozilla Firefox browser in our offices and we are currently evaluating the Thunderbird email client.

Our arguments in favour of open source software and products are relatively simple, and are best expressed by illustration.

Newton is credited with the quote : "If I have seen further than you, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants".

Now, imagine a world where Newton had claimed to own calculus, or the law of gravity? We would have to pay a fee to his estate every time we used one of the principles that he discovered?

Sounds ridiculous? How about having to pay BT Plc every time you clicked on a hyperlink? They tried to claim that they invented the hyperlink so you almost had to.

How about paying Microsoft for every email that you send, or every letter that you write? Well you already do every time you buy a PC with Office on it, or the software itself.

Microsoft’s monopoly and patent ownerships protect them against competition and allow them to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess of the labor measure of their services. (Apologies as this paragraph was a reworking of Benjamin Tucker, Instead of a Book, By a Man Too Busy to Write One: A Fragmentary Exposition of Philosophical Anarchism New York: Tucker, 1893, p. 13.)

Society is more than a series of headlines and sound bites.

The world is not moved only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker. (Helen Keller)