Do you use open source software? If you don’t, Tom Merritt from Cnet says you are wasting money. For almost every application or program you use on your computer that you buy, you can get a free version. There are thousands of free open source programs available to download from wordprocessing to image editing. And in the featured video Tom gives us a few of his favourite free programs.
Open source software is where groups of developers get together to create software you can use for free. So, why would they do this and how do they get paid? They will often do it for the kudos and they do it in their own time or their employers encourage it. It’s not trashy software either. WordPress, firefox, Linux are all high quality, free, open source programs. WordPress is worked on by hundreds of software developers from around the world.
Some of Tom’s picks include Open Office. Open Office is a great alternative to Microsoft office and includes wordprocessor, spreadsheet and presentation software. Gimpshop is an excellent Photoshop lookalike, which is almost as good. Audacity is perfect for recording sound and publishing podcasts and includes an array of audio effects. Mediacoder is adept at video conversion to almost any media format. Many of these programs are available to download from Cnet.
What about software support? As it’s free, you don’t get any. Right? That is true. But there is often a popular user and developer community with busy forums, which help with all sorts of technical problems. So, is there a website where you can browse just about any open source program? There is and it’s sourceforge; the world’s largest open source software development site with 230,000 software projects, when I last looked. I can spend hours on this site just exploring.
Free software doesn’t mean poor software with open source. See what you can find.
