Friday, June 09, 2006

freeware...

i respect software i pay for, as it often comes with support, upgrades, warranty, and the money you shell out is supposed to indicate usefulness and stability.

however, i am starting to become a fan of what is referred to as opensource software (for those of you unfamiliar with this - it is software whose sourcecode is publicly available, and is developed by teams or groups of people working on it. the code is protected by copyright and licenses. the same licenses also protect the users by keeping it public and free. use of the code, or parts of the code require the end product to be distrubuted under the same licenses the original code was developed under).

let's just say, there's a lot of brilliant people out there, creating free versions of software that cost big bucks. because they think the development model works better. fixes bugs faster. and because they think it should benefit everyone.

anyway.... here are some utilities that i've been using, or have switched to. not all are opensource (most are though), although all of the ones listed here are freeware - at time of listing. (sorry, a although many of these utilities are cross-platform, i am primarily a windows user.)

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