[Fsf-friends] Software freedom? Why? (Derek Cordeiro's blog)

[Frederick Noronha [फ़रेदरिक नोरोनया]]

01 October 2008  Software
Freedom<http://www.derekcordeiro.com/2008/10/software-freedom.html>
Software Freedom day is celebrated worldwide on the 3rd Saturday of
September 1 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software%20Freedom%20Day>. But in
Goa, it was celebrated at BITS Pilani, Goa
Campus<http://www.bits-goa.ac.in/>on the 27th(or was it a 2 day
event?).

I have heard people define Free/Open Source Software time and again. There
are endless discussions about which Open Source license is the best. One
thing that should be known to all: Open Source Software is here to stay.
Open Source even mentioned in textbooks e.g. Software Engineering books like
Object-Oriented and Classical Software Engineering by Steven Schach. But
what is the easiest way to adopt Free Software on your Desktop PC?

If you already use GNU/Linux or *BSD or Solaris, you already have a whole
lot of free software already installed. You probably have very little
non-free software. The only thing you can do to contribute is to help
others(could be help new users, or help developers, etc). If you use
Microsoft Windows or Mac, follow some easy steps.

Use Free Software as much as possible.

   1. Firefox <http://getfirefox.com/> /Chrome/Flock <http://flock.com/> for
   browsing.
   2. OpenOffice <http://openoffice.org/> for good quality formatted text
   documents/spreadsheets/presentations.(at the time of writing, OpenOffice 3.0
   RC3 is available)
   extra: Check out the openoffice extensions like the template packs I and
   II
   3. Pidgin <http://pidgin.im/> for Instant Messaging.
   4. Thunderbird <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/> for email.
   5. Free Developer tools like Eclipse <http://eclipse.org/> ,
Netbeans<http://netbeans.org/>together with
   MinGW <http://www.mingw.org/> /MSYS <http://www.mingw.org/wiki/msys> and
   free libraries like wxWidgets <http://wxwidgets.org/> (If you know MFC,
   it is an excellent choice).
   6. Java <http://java.sun.com/> is mostly Free software, use it.

 The most important thing though is not to discourage others from using
it.(This goes out especially to fanboys who are pretty narrow minded).
Sometimes I've heard people say that Linux sucks. I cannot disagree or agree
-- Linux is far from perfect, but nothing really is perfect.(The same people
say that Vista is awesome--I think Microsoft will not completely agree with
that).
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-- 
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Blog: http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com
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