Saturday, January 17, 2009

Why go proprietary when you can go Free

The tools in the Industrial Engineer and Operations Research tool bag is increasing with the advances of software systems. In the past the tools were relegated to proprietary software that would cost an organization licensing fees, software updates, and support services. Yet there is a shift in thinking in how software is developed, delivered, and administered to the masses. That shift is in free and open source software. This free software movement has shifted the thinking that good software need not be copyrighted and licensed for proprietary distribution. Instead software should be made freely to the masses to use, distributed, and even improve upon.

The free and open source software movement has even made its way to Industrial Engineer and Operations Research tools. There are many proprietary equivalents that can be found in the free software realm. Most of which will even work on a Windows platform. I have listed some of these software tools in a equivalents table.

Spreadsheet
Microsoft Excel ---> OpenOffice Calc, KOffice KSpread

Spreadsheet LP Solver
Excel Solver ---> OpenOffice.org Calc Optimization Solver

Math Programming Software
AMPL, CPLEX, GAMS ---> GLPK, OpenOpt


These are but only a few equivalents. You can see more free and open source equivalents to all sorts of software on the following links.

The Table of Equivalents
LinuxQuestions.org equivalents table

10 comments:

All Assignment help reviews said...

Welcome to the review of AllAssignmenthelp reviews, a writing service in Britain aimed at USA and Australia students. we will provide best AllAssignmenthelp.com reviews in USA, UK and Australia.

Melissa hogan said...

My husband left me last year after 25 years of marriage (he turned 50). It has been the most difficult year of my life, but full of lessons about myself and what life and marriage are all about. I am passionate about marriage and i didn't give up on my husband. resides in USA, I entered online in search of advice on how i can amend my marriage while i was at work. I saw so many positive reviews and nice feed back about how a Doctor called______________Robinson.buckler@ yahoo. com has been wonderful with his work. I gave a shot to make contact with him via his Email and he assured me that my marriage will be peaceful and i believed in his words. 16 hours after he finished work, my husband came back home pleading and now, we are living peacefully again. Get in contact with him if you need any help. he is the real deal WE’RE BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Assignment Help said...



Your article is very nice to thank you for share this information. It is very useful for all peoples there are all possibilities to provide for this blog.
Coursework Help

Cheap bus hire said...

Nice article and happy to read this. And also If you want to travel in Sydney contact Sydney Bus Hire experience us.
Sydney Bus Hire

hrroman said...

How amazing Your information is very detailed and useful to me, thank you for sharing. I hope you will always be up to date. We also provide affordable Your information is very detailed and useful to me, thank you for sharing. I hope you will always be up to date. AND ABS Consulting is a top seo agency in USA. We best provide professional seo services.
Visit this sites :

KeiraDoltan said...

Great Experience the Best Assignment Writing Services at

My Assignment Help Australia
My Assignment Help com

KeiraDoltan said...

Complete Your Assignment From
My Assignment Help Australia
My Assignment Help com

Assignment Help said...

Blog with useful information.
Engineering Assignment Help

Eugene James said...

Complete Your Assignment From
Assignment Writing Help

Lucy said...

The hashtag “#NFTcommunity” is trending, and the buzz is spreading into the event industry. virtual edge The acronym “NFT” stands for “non-fungible token”, and it is essentially an online (blockchain) record that represents ownership of a digital asset — usually an image or a video clip, but theoretically anything in the digital sphere. debriefings, service in hospitality industry, what is web3, what is an nft, what is metaverse, how to write a short bio for a presentation, local vendor events, thank you for participating and professional invitation email