There are many FREE programs that are better than the product they replace. If you don't know it already, I'm talking about Open Source programs.

Many sites will host open source projects for free such as SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net) and FreshMeat (http://freshmeat.net/). You can start your own project or search for others.

In order to really start this next section, you have to understand what Open Source means. You may read the complete definition at http://opensource.org/docs/definition.php but I'm going to go into a basic overview of the subject.

1. Free Redistribution: All work is free and can be redistributed for free.
2. Source Code: Source code is provided in an easy to modify and compile form.
3. Derived Works: License must allow modifications and distributions of modifications under the same license.
4. No Discrimination: The License must not discriminate against any person or group and it cannot restrict anyone from using it.
5. License: It must be the same one even if you modify the files. It must not be product specific or restrict other software.

Now that we know a little about what Open Source software is, lets see some in action.

GAIM the Next Generation of IM

The first one that I'll introduce to you must be the most useful in my opinion. I'm talking about GAIM (http://gaim.sourceforge.net), the open source alternative to AIM, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, Gadu-Gadu, Groupwise, IRC, Jabber, Napster and SILC. It is available for Windows, Fedora Core 1, 2 and 3, Red Hat 9 and Mandrake 9.1, 9.2 and 10. Maybe you don't have any of those. Why not just grab the source for the latest version and compile it yourself? GAIM supports signing into multiple accounts on the same or multiple networks at the same time.

These next three that I'll highlight are just some that us cheapskates can get for free compared to hundreds of dollars or lawsuits if you know what I mean.

GNU Image Manipulation Program

The GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) short for GNU Image Manipulation Program is basically a free version of Photoshop. It has all of the tools that you have in PS and there's no risk of legal actions taken against you. It is a very good program but not as powerful as the most recent version of Photoshop. It acts different and takes some getting used to but is really easy to use.

7-Zip Makes Smaller Compressed Files

WinZip, WinRAR, WinAce. None of them can compare to the power of 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/). It supports .zip and .rar files as expected, but it also has its own compression scheme .7z. It is very powerful but doesn't do two things that I'd like it to do, drag-and-drop extraction and automatically making a folder if I tell it to extract to C:\Documents and Settings\Jojo\Desktop\*new/uncreated folder*. Other than that its one of the best compression programs out there.

OpenOffice, The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

My absolute favorite piece of Open Source Software is OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/) which is now in 2.0 beta. You can open and edit Word documents (.doc), make a spreadsheet and a graph, make presentations, and basically anything else that Microsoft Office can do but better. If there is one program you don't pay for this year let it be OpenOffice.

Article by Jojo Yohan yohanorama@gmail.com

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