Who doesn’t like the word free? They say nothing in life is free, but they’re wrong (for the most part).
What is open source? Open source means that the program is not owned by any one certain company. This is great, that’s one of the reasons why the software is free. Programmers give their time and help develop the program, and they’re paid by donations made to the project (please donate to the developers, they’re good people) and ads they sell on their sites for the program (click on their ads too).
I felt compelled to make a list of the open source applications that I use daily because these are truly great programs, sometimes even better than the program upon which they’re based.