Open source software is computer software where the source code and many rights normally reserved for copyright holders are in the public domain. Often, it is referred to as free software.

Open source software is not necessarily for everyone.

The software can be “glitchy”. The user interface is not always familiar. Your place of employment may not allow the software to be installed onto their computers. It may not do what you need it to do.

But, if you want a free alternative to software that may be out of your price range, or if you don't need all the bells and whistles that expensive software provides, the software listed below is stable and reliable.

For anyone feeling guilty, you can replace the illegal or pirated software you have installed on your computer with these perfectly legal versions. ;)

	The Gimp is a free graphics editor. It is primarily used as a tool for resizing, editing and cropping photos, but can also be used for the creation of original images. Gimp has many Photoshop-like capabilities and is popular with amateur artists.
	OpenOffice.org is an open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It can read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
	Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
	Notepad++ is a free (as in “free speech” and also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement. The web pages on this web site were edited with the program.
	Mozilla Firefox is a popular web browser. There are versions available for almost every computer operating system. It's estimated that almost 1 in 4 web surfers use Firefox.
	Mozilla Thunderbird is an email program. For those that do not use web-based email such as Hotmail or Gmail, it's is a good alternative. You can even configure Thunderbird to access you web based accounts if you want.