Free software

Free Software is an alternative way of creating computer programs. Open-minded people with a passion for computers and a feeling for community come together and produce software for the common good. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer. Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

The source code, which is the human-friendly written language that is basis for every computer program, lays "open" - it comes with the software or is available for download on the Internet. In contrary to this in non-free software the sorce code is often a well-guarded secret and only available to a small number of people. This is why Free Software is also called Open Source software. The name Open Source has become the preferred marketing term for commercial Free Software projects. FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) is a term that unites the both.

In Free Software the users can change and extend the source code themselves and distribute their changes to other users - the software evolves constantly and is designed by the people who use it. Free software is typically created by programmers all over the world, who use the internet to cooperate and coordinate their efforts. Free Software is also an example of Sustainable Development, allowing environmental awareness and ensuring social and economic justice.

Office software

OpenOffice.org

A good free editing software that started on the *nix systems to fight the Microsoft's Office package is OpenOffice.org free and open source you may download it freely. You may do Excel style spreadsheets or use their MS Word like software for editing magazine and so forth.

Official Site: OpenOffice (OpenOffice.org)

Internet browsers

Mozilla Firefox

Official site: Firefox

External links

Free Software Foundation

List of Free and Open Source Software