Good Open Source Software?

Question

I am taking a technical writing class, and will need to do a review on an open source software program. However, I am not too familiar with open source. Does anyone know of any good open source software programs that are easy to use/ interesting? Any additional help with understanding open source would be great as well.

Thanks!

Answer 1

These are some of my favorites:



Audacity - audio recording software.

Calibre - ebook organizing, reading and converting

VLC - Video and audio player

Firefox - web browser

Thunderbird - email client

Gimp - Image editor

Inkscape - SVG editor

Scribus - desktop punlishing application

Libre Office - office productivity suite



As for understanding it, try reading "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond. He has it available for free at http://manybooks.net/titles/raymondericother05cathedralandbazaar.html as well as other sites. Raymond is one of the fathers of the open source movement and does a good job of explaining the underlying philosophy.

Answer 2

www.getpaint.net



The link above is to an open source image editing program. I think it is a pretty nice program and fairly easy to use.



Open source usually means that the source code for the program is available to anyone who wants it. An example of something that is NOT open source code is the Windows operating system. Microsoft does not make the programming code for Windows available to the public.

Answer 3

Open source software is software where the coding is released freely. Mozilla Firefox is one of the most popular open source software available.



Here is a webpage that shows you how to download the source code of the different Firefox builds: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Download_Mozilla_Source_Code