Free Software for Everyone

Herman Melville is most remembered as the author of "Moby Dick." When it was first published, the general public thought of it the same way as most high-school students do today: what a bore. What most people don't realize is that it is based on a true story. Only in the true story Captain Ahab doesn't die. The ship does get smashed by an angry whale and the crew is left to survive an incredible ordeal in their life boats.

While I have read "Moby Dick," I actually prefer one of Melville's earlier books entitled "Typee." As with his more famous work, Typee is based on a true story. Melville was good at writing what he knew about. Early in Melville's life, he signed on as crew on a whaling ship. About the time he got to the South Pacific, he realized what a horrible decision he had made and decided to abandon ship in the Marquesas. Typee is a fictional story based on this experience. After the story was published it was discovered that there was more truth to the story than fiction.

Melville describes life in a near perfect world on Marquesas. Food is abundant. If you get hungry, simply pick tropical fruit off the closest tree. If you are looking for a ham sandwich, pigs roamed the area in plentiful quantities and so there was never any concern for food. As for shelter, the entire village pitched in and built you a hut as soon as you were ready to move out of Mom and Dad's. As the weather is relatively perfect, clothing need not be elaborate. So what did everyone do with their time? They lived in what we call a "gift economy." If you liked carving Tiki idols, you would make them and then give them away.

That same "gift economy" exists in the software world. Software that is given away and can be freely used is called "Open Source Software." If you don't want to pay the $125 to Microsoft for a Student/Teacher version of Office, there is OpenOffice.org that reads and writes Office files. Don't want to pay the $699 for Adobe Photoshop, there is GIMP. Doing work with databases and don't want to fork over your first born for Oracle, there is PostgreSQL.

These are not crippled versions of software that you can try for 90 days and then are asked to pay money. These are full working versions of software that mimic the functionality of their more expensive cousins. Should you be interested in making any modifications to the programs, you can also get the source for free. Of course, if you are good enough at software development to make any changes, the open source community hopes that you will make those changes available to everyone.

Open source software is freely available software that you can use without any licensing costs. It is created by people that have a little extra time on their hands and don't mind sharing with you. The next time you think you need to spend money on a new piece of software, do an Internet search and see if there isn't something already out there for free. There generally is.