This week we had Jason again.
We checked out what's called Open Source Software. Programs and applications made by users for non-profit purposes, but simply to go against the monopoly held by companies like Microsoft and Abode who charge excessive absorbent prices for necessary software.
Unlike programs made by the evil corporations, Open Source Software, also referred to as Freeware, has open coding, and so other users can edit and evolve the code. Freeware exists in a collaborative environment where everyone freely contributes to create better and better programs for free access.
For people that don't want to fork out hundreds to thousands of dollars for a copy of Photoshop because they need to edit an image as part of their education or work, there exists "Gimp" essentially a recreation of photoshop, except without a few features. Freeware creators start from scratch and produce programs that mimic the necessary features of existing available software and then make it free for the public.
Another feature of freeware, is that often these pieces of software will carry out only small and very specific tasks. Jason mentioned one that would go through and resize a collection of photographs, a great invention as it prevents users from having to individually resize each.
There was an exhaustive extent of available programs. Fortunately, our next task was to download some and check them out. Needless to say, I'm eager to do just that.
Links containing collections of freeware include:
www.portableapps.com
www.freewaregenius.com
http://download.cnet.com
As a sidenote, portableapps has the best overall collection, freewaregenius exists to review rather than distribute the applications, however most reviews have a link to the software in question. Download.cnet does provide some freeware programs, however, there is a downfall. Most programs found there are free trial versions and don't give the user full use of the program and continue to request purchase.
So be warned...
Until next time where I review some freeware applications myself.
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