Open Sesame - Latest Comments in What’s your favorite open source product?

Re: What’s your favorite open source product?

Bryant Patten — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:30:43 -0000

Nicole -
One of my current favorites is Untangle (www.untangle.com). Not only does it provide a great deal of functionality but it has several other meta- attributes that I am hoping show the future direction of many FOSS projects. These include:

1) A really visually spectacular and easy user interface.
2) A quite friendly and stable install process from their ISO image.
3) Free support via forums and an option for phone support for a subscription fee with a 'real company' answering the phone.

I know for a lot of librarians the 'F-Word' refers to filtering so they might miss Untangle but they might want to give it another look since filtering is only one part of its offerings - and can easily be shut off!

Re: What’s your favorite open source product?

Kitaj — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:12:24 -0000

Well, Debian is the biggest piece of OSS that I use.
Otherwise I would add Inkscape, Scribus, eXe and ClamAV.

GIMP:
http://www.gimp.org/about/
http://www.gimp.org/about/COPYING

Re: What’s your favorite open source product?

Kevin Scheib — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:57:07 -0000

The Gimp is the GNU Image Manipulation Program and is released under the GPL which specifies that the source code be readily accessible. More information is found under the faq page http://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#Where

Re: What’s your favorite open source product?

Harvey Morrell — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:44:57 -0000

http://www.winlibre.com/en/index.php has several open source software options for those stuck in a Windows environment.

Nicole: From the Gimp site: GIMP is Free Software and a part of the GNU Project. In the free software world, there is generally no distinction between users and developers. As in a friendly neighbourhood, everybody pitches in to help their neighbors. Please consider the time you give in assistance to others as payment. Sure sounds like open source to me.

For those on the Mac OS X side looking for open source software:
http://www.opensourcemac.org/

Re: What’s your favorite open source product?

Jerry Yarnetsky — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:36:12 -0000

It is a rather indirect reference. On top it mentions that GIMP is for "GNU Image Manipulation Program" GNU (http://www.gnu.org/) is supported by the Free Software Foundation. All the Gn software is under their umbrella such as the Gnome interface for Linux.

On the desktop there's always good ol' OpenOffice.

On the server side, the newly release Omeka digital projects software is showing real promise. I use Textpattern for our library's website.

Re: What’s your favorite open source product?

Chris — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:13:18 -0000

Its free software (its a GNU project) you won't see the words open source as thats not a term free software proponents use.

" Where do I get it?

Most (if not all) Linux distributions will support GIMP through their package management systems and may even come with GIMP preinstalled. You can follow links to Linux and UNIX, Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X for the latest binaries. Of course, this is free software so the source code is available to, along with instruction on how to compile it."

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html <-- for what is meant by free software.

Its licensed under the GPL

Re: What’s your favorite open source product?

Jason Puckett — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:31:05 -0000

Wow, Glen has my spectrum pretty well covered.

Nicole, GIMP offers source code on its download page: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

Re: What’s your favorite open source product?

Nicole C. Engard — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:26:33 -0000

Glen, excuse my ignorance - but I have yet to find anything on the GIMP site that says it's open source - that's the only thing stopping me from including it in my presentation. I had all the others except for Audacity!

Re: What’s your favorite open source product?

Glen Horton — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:05:47 -0000

On the server side I like Drupal, Greenstone, WordPress, MediaWiki, and of course the whole LAMP thing.

On the the desktop, I use Ubuntu, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, GIMP, Pidgin, VLC, and Audacity.

Re: What’s your favorite open source product?

Nicole C. Engard — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:49:10 -0000

You know I never even thought about blogs and wikis!! I wonder why not! Thanks :)

Re: What’s your favorite open source product?

Jason Griffey — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:45:34 -0000

I'd include Wordpress and MediaWiki at least. :-)