Who doesn't love donut holes? If you say you don't be gone from this blog ; )
I am not one to eat donuts on a regular day but today is special. Today I received the fruits of a bet with Glennis, our new Director of HR. Last week Glennis came to me with a request to purchase an applicant tracking system that ran about $1600 a month. She had worked with the same system before in her previous role at some big companies. I told her that I bet that there was free software that did the most important 80% of what she needed. She looked at me dumbfounded. "FREE!?!?!" No way. "Yes way"... "No way" this went on for a good bit. Finally we made a bet, the loser had to buy the winner donuts holes.
Sure enough, there is an awesome little open source application called CATS that provides a robust set of applicant tracking features for HR departments. I kind of feel like I cheated a bit. Glennis isn't as familiar with the world of open source as I am. She comes from companies with huge IT teams that like to buy expensive well known applications and wouldn't think of installing open source software. I feel bad, but not bad enough to not eat the donut holes.
Have any of you found some open source software that has helped you in your business or personal life that you think we should all know about? Drop a comment here.
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Comments (RSS)
Cass said...
yes, indeed! I am a big fan of wordpress, for instance ;0
pass the donut holes, please.
Aug 23, 2007 10:25:48 AM
Jamie said...
<3 OpenAds!
Mmmmm donuts. Thank you Ted for placing bets that benefit the bellies of all.
Aug 23, 2007 10:38:50 AM
Pete Wright said...
It's worth pointing out as well that this entire company is built around open source software. We program in Ruby (open-source) using the Rails framework (open-source). We host on Linux (open-source) using Apache (open-source) and Mongrel (open-source). We even monitor the performance of our systems with Nagios and Cacti - both open source.
Across the company, to save money on Office licenses, we have a bunch of people using NeoOffice (open source). Our browser of choice is the open-source Firefox, and many people eschew Apple's Mail client for the open-source Thunderbird mail client.
Aug 23, 2007 1:11:31 PM
Tim said...
I'm teaching myself to use Open Workbench, an open-source replacement for MSProject.
For fun.
Because I'm a curious guy.
(Really, I'm a sick, sick man. I need a life.)
Aug 23, 2007 3:47:51 PM
marie said...
Here, in Canada, we call our donut holes "Timbits",from the donut chain "Tim Horton". He was a canadian hockey player who died in a car crash.
They are sooooooo good.
Marie
Aug 23, 2007 4:19:21 PM
Ghosty said...
The GIMP.
http://www.gimp.org/
My kinda photoshop.
Aug 23, 2007 5:06:25 PM
Lucynda Riley said...
Oooooh I love donut holes. There is a little mom and pop donut shop here in town. Its been here for as long as I can remember. I can remember when we had relatives staying over on holidays and everyone would pitch in and buy donuts from them. I would wake up in the morning and fine there red and cream colored boxes on the table. They made the best donuts and had great donut holes.
Aug 23, 2007 8:18:03 PM
techie said...
Pete,
And you use the open source MAC software. Wait, that's not open source. Just playin with ya. I hope you at least boot camp. I love the rest of the list.
Anyway, I have too many open source to list here. Just last night I was working with a guy just starting his own business and I listed off 10 or so open source packages he could do the same thing with for free. Interestingly, the free software conversation was opened with one of the most useful open source packages PDFCreator (or name your favorite PDF printer).
Aug 23, 2007 10:11:48 PM
Linda R, Moore said...
The GIMP.
Apache.
Wordpress.
OpenOffice.
Linux.
Etc. etc. etc. About 80% of the software I use at home and for business is open source.
Aug 24, 2007 12:02:28 AM
macewan said...
Well, I'm an Ubuntu Linux geek if that counts for anything. Before she moved on to a Mac my wife preferred the Linux platform too. Each of us have been individually interviewed by Linux.com in previous years. Ubuntu Linux is being used a the office and at home.
Val is now using an iMac (thanks to PayPerPost) and for graphics she uses software based off of GIMP - thinging it's called Seahorse(sp).
Aug 28, 2007 7:48:19 AM