The Use of Open Source Software Used in Web Hosting

You’ve probably heard about open source software due to its increasing popularity in the IT world. After all, the growing use of Linux as an end-user operating system, as well as the availability of enterprise software in similar open source applications has made open source software a preferred choice for small businesses and individuals.

Open source software is essentially freely-distributed software that has its source code available for others to view, modify, and distribute as necessary. The family of open source software has grown to accommodate many different needs – operating systems, PC and server software, and websites. As it pertains to web hosting, open source software is typically present in most environments in some form or another.

The operating system

Many hosts utilize Linux, which is an open-source operating system, to run their servers. Others, however, many choose to run Windows closed-source Unix distributions, which are proprietary.

As a second layer to the operating system, some software provides virtualization capabilities that are commonly used to allow multiple operating systems to run inside of a parent server. Software that provides capabilities like this include Xen, VirtualBox, OpenVZ, and LXC.

Server software

The software that runs on most hosting servers may be open source – such as Apache (web server), MySQL (database server), and many programming languages that websites often interface with – such as PHP, Ruby, Perl, and Python. Programming languages that are specific to Windows, or that require a purchased license to use (such as Coldfusion), are typically not open source.

Website software

Most of us are familiar with open source software in how it pertains to running websites. While there are many applications out there that can be purchased, some of the most popular ones are free and open source, and are often considered to be secure and reliable. Some examples of popular open source website software include WordPress (blogging), Joomla (content management), and OsCommerce (shopping cart).