(open source[free]) software list People are generally well informed on commercial software, even applications they may not use on a day to day basis, such as Adobe Photoshop. Often however, you will want to do something you do not have the software for, like fake a UFO sighting, and the software you ideally need is far too expensive to buy for the infrequent times you use it. Photoshop costs around £400 and say you are going to use it to fake the UFO and not much else, by the time you use it again there will be a newer version out. Probably not worth the money. Similarly say you have 3 computers in your house. New desktop, bedroom computer and laptop. Some high end software licences will allow you to install only on one device at once. Meaning you have to pay three times to use your software on all your computers. Cost effective if you are a large company but not if you are an individual. This is where open source alternatives are incredibly useful. But these are often less well known about and people find time consuming to research them, especially sifting through vast quantities of varying quality applications which often you need to try to find out how good they are. Searching ‘free photo editor’ for example will give you a lot to look at. Here is a list of some of the best open source software alternatives to commercial applications. Also i have listed in some cases proprietary ones that are available for free, think Google sketch up, earth etc. The list is focussed mainly on high end software as this is what is often too expensive to buy. Also as open source software is free you may as well go for the best. All the alternatives here compete strongly with their commercial opponents, especially when being used at a basic level. While not all have the full feature set or are quite as streamlined, most people won’t find this an issue as they simply won’t use those features. Being cross platform has been taken into account as many people have two os's and its nice to be able to use the same software. Many people are concerned that they will not have any support available if they run into problems, but quite to the contrary most open source software has a large user base and support in the form of well documented manual’s and update lists, and vast online forums. Updated versions will of course be free (frequent too depending on the dev team) and so you will never have to pay to get the most up to date features. Most pieces in this list are also cross platform (windows/mac/linux) meaning you can use the same software regardless of the operating system you are running. While this may sound too good to be true, it’s really not. The open source model means students, university staff, large cooperate r&d teams, hobbyists and many more types of people work towards developing open source software. Many projects are more stable with better long term plans than their commercial counterparts meaning after learning how to use a piece of software it is unlikely to ‘dissapear’. Links – If unfamiliar with open source software, or you’re not in a rush you may want to look at few of these sites. Open source wiki- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source GPL wiki- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License GPL website (actually gnu o/s website) - http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html Free software foundation - http://www.fsf.org/ Open source initiative - http://www.opensource.org/about Wikipedia list of open source software packages - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_software_packages (no-where near complete) A load of lectures on working open source (not just on software check out the rest of the site, loads of really interesting presentations) - http://www.ted.com/themes/the_rise_of_collaboration.html Youtube interview with the founder of the GPL, Richard Stallman (quite on ethics) followed by playlist of videos on open source software - http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=kSZZraHN0Yg&feature=PlayList&p=65CA10D0F42E48FD&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=7 Another interview - http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=o2xfrApGOr4&feature=PlayList&p=65CA10D0F42E48FD&index=8 The list Office Suite Proprietary example – Microsoft office (various versions of: student, ultimate, enterprise) Free alternative – OpenOffice - http://www.openoffice.org/ Open office is a complete office suite available completely free. Developed by sun Microsystems and the free software community this is a major rival to Microsoft office. It is completely cross platform meaning it will run on all mac/windows/unix machines. It is compatible with Microsoft office formats. It includes features such as PDF export which are not in the Microsoft suite Two good proprietary office suites can be found online. Google docs and Zoho are web based productivity software which are free to use for personal use. While they have a relatively small toolset they can be used completely online with your documents always ‘on the cloud’ and accessible wherever you have the internet. Having said that they can be downloaded in standard formats if you need to. Raster graphics editor Proprietary example – Adobe photoshop, Corel painter, Corel paint shop pro Free alternative – Gimp - http://www.gimp.org/ Gimp (GNU image manipulation programme) is a raster graphics editor (photo editor). Started as a university project it is currently being developed under the Gnome project (a unix desktop environment http://www.gnome.org/). It is windows/mac/unix cross platform. Its feature set is below that of photoshop CS4 (the current release) but perfectly adequate for most projects. A home user would not miss the lacking features, most of them are related to 3d compositing. Those used to an adobe interface may find it slightly cluttered, but it is perfectly usable and probably friendlier to new users. For really basic editing (colour correction, touch-up) Google’s Picassa http://picasa.google.co.uk/ (which is also a photo manager, bit like iphoto) may do. This is free but still proprietary. Vector graphics editor Proprietary example – Adobe illustrator, corelDraw Free alternative –Inkscape- http://www.inkscape.org/ Inkscape is a fork of the Sodipodi project. It’s a powerfull vector graphics editor (drawings rather than photo’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics) with a large development team and regular updates. Windows/mac/unix cross platform. The feature set is a good as it’s competitors. Open office contains draw – a simple vector graphics editor. 3D graphics creation (modelling, animating, texturing, rendering) Proprietary example – Maya, 3DSmax, C4d Free alternative –Blender - http://www.blender.org/ Blender is a versatile and powerful 3d graphics application, with a learning curve to match. It has robust feature set comparable to industry standard applications such as Maya and 3dsmax, even including physics and python scripting tools. Its interface is unique and takes getting used to, and may be confusing if you are used to Maya, max, c4d etc. But this is usually the case with 3d applications. As well as 3d content creation it can also be used for non-linear editing and compositing (proprietary examples: after effects/motion/combustion/flame). Comparable programmes when purchased with a commercial license are prohibitively expensive for the casual user, many costing over £4000. Student licensees are only available to students and personal learning editions are heavily limited. Truespace http://www.caligari.com/ is a proprietary free option. Created by Callagri and recently joined with Microsoft it is a complete 3d content creation package. Much simpler with much more basic features it still takes time to learn but also gives good results. It has recently been announced that Microsoft is to cut funding and the project will most probably come to an end. (i have backed up the latest full install .exe and documentation) Google sketchup http://sketchup.google.com/ is another proprietary free option. It is more aimed at CAD than 3d content creation and has a very simple toolset. Non linear video compositor Proprietary example – After effects, Motion, combustion, Toxik, Nuke, Fusion Free alternative – Blender As far as compositing is concerned blender is the best open source cross platform option, the only one in fact currently. It is quite powerful but being node based can be hard to get to grips with and is not ideal for small compositions that rely heavily on timed effects. Blender can perform advanced compositing but is really for working on effects shots not editing and finishing a video project. Non linear video editor Proprietary example – Adobe premiere pro, Apple final cut, Sony vegas Free alternative – No definite option There is no open source, cross platform complete solution for video editing and finishing. Here lower end options have been considered as high end options are far above what most people can ‘grasp’ and most of the open source options are mid range. There are currently no real open source options for windows. However windows movie make (now live movie maker) is adequate for very basic projects. For more advance projects Sony Vegas movie studio would be a good option. With many advance features( such as 5.1 sound mixing, HD capability and compositing tools) and a price tag of only £75 it would be an ok buy if you are fixed to a windows platform. Almost a windows version of Apples Final Cut Express. KDElive http://kdenlive.org/ and PiTiVi http://www.pitivi.org/wiki/Main_Page are good options for linux. And have a feature sets somewhere between windows movie maker and Sony Vegas. LiVES http://lives.sourceforge.net/ is an option for Mac and Linux.