For now what I want to do is get the idea out so you can see what Open Source means. The basic idea is that this is free software. It is free software in the sense that you have liberties you don’t normally have. Such that if a programmer has an idea to customize it or to improve on it he is free to do so without legal reprocutions. Basically you are free to do modify and use it as you wish. Open Source is also mainly done in the spirit of making it cost free.

I’ll probably re-write this post, but for now I just want to get you exposed to the idea. Here are the benefits. There is absolutely great software free to use because of Open Source projects at SourceForge.net

This is a list of my most recommended software produced by Open Source projects:

FireFox is an Internet Explorer replacement which is highly customizable. It is easier on your computer overall and you’ll notice the smoothness of it reaction time to your actions.

PDFCreator this free program installs a virtual printer which creates PDF files you can use to email documents that you want anyone to be able to see without modifying it.

OpenOffice.org this is a Microsoft Suite(Word, Excel, Access, etc) Replacement. If you don’t have a word type suite than definitely install this. It can create word documents and other Microsoft document types.

These are only the tip of the iceberg and I will elaborate more in the future, but these applications are a great start to get exposed to the idea of free open source application projects.