Sometime last year I had the good fortune of attending a lecture at University Malaya by Richard Stallman. Largely seen as a pioneer in the open-source movement, and founder of the GNU license, his words left a lasting impression on everyone in the auditorium.
This post will however focus on two great free open-source programs which you can get at Sourceforge which to me is the best place to get your genuine open-source programs which you can use without fear of getting infected by viruses or having your machine getting clogged up by spyware or adware. Both pieces of software are available under the free software GNU license.
PDF Creator is a fantastic program which enables quick free easy conversion of office documents to PDF files. .. which I find are great for non-editable documents like certification and final versions of contracts. Full benefits of using PDFs rather than normal office documents can be viewed here.
Filezilla is a free FTP client which is powerful but yet still pretty intuitive. There are plenty of free FTP software solutions out there like cuteFTP, if you are a private user, but most of them require a commercial license for business purposes. This is fine in most cases, but if you suddenly need to use FTP don’t have an IT budget to play around with you might have been forced to use Windows explorer copy-paste *cringe* to do your work.
Both PDF Creator and Filezilla are great examples of how well open-source works if implemented properly, as they are two very robust and powerful pieces of software, which I make use of on a regular basis at work.
Bonus Tip: Don’t use Google to search for “free software”. You never really know what you are installing. As far as possible, try to make reliable sources your first stop. Using Firefox Smartsearch enables you to search souces like Sourceforge and Softpedia directly is a great way to save time, and be assured that whatever you install is safe.
Related Links:
Sourceforge
PDF Creator
Filezilla
Sourceforge Firefox Smart Search
Softpedia Firefox Smart Search
GNU
Technorati Tags: gnu, gpl,open+source, stallman, filezilla, pdf, pdf+creator, sourceforge, softpedia
March 20th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
we use both in our office environment. really cool software.
file zilla i think, is the only ftp software, that can be installed on a USB drive…as it can store all information in XML, and not in system registry.
March 20th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
…One more reason to love Filezilla :)
March 21st, 2006 at 11:21 am
Thanks James… been looking for a FREE pdf converter.
March 29th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Filezilla is not the only FTP client that will fit on a USB drive. I run iFTP off of my USB drive (for several months now in fact).
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Hello, wonderful and informative web site.
Good luck.