When we first talked about writing this book, we assumed that we would include a CD-ROM containing all the software mentioned here. When we started working on it, however, and began to appreciate the enormous scope of open source tools and Oracle applications that we wanted to describe, we soon realized that a CD wasn’t necessary, for two reasons:
Software distributed in accordance with the Open Source Definition (described in Chapter 1) is, by definition, almost always available for immediate download over the Internet, free of charge. Therefore, along with the description of each piece of open software covered in this book, we’ll include the appropriate FTP or HTTP web reference for downloading this software.
Successful open source software also tends to evolve constantly, and often in unpredictable bursts of activity (sometimes following periods of stasis). Trying to get the hundred or so different pieces of software covered in this book onto a single CD-ROM at a single point in time would be a lot like hitting a hundred randomly moving targets with a single silver bullet. We thought it would be far better for you to download the latest, up-to-the-minute version of each tool you’re interested in, straight off the Internet, just when you need it. The beauty of open source is that it’s always available to you, at the click of a download button.
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