Open Source Software

I am a big fan of software in the Open Source community. I have contributed to projects (albeit minimally) in the past and have a few projects out there that I would love to one day make "official" and public for the world. Aside from the obvious (free!), I find that most Open Source projects are far more agile and forward thinking then their commercial entities. I could discuss this for hours... and seeing that my personal livelihood rests upon the sale of the commercial software that I design/write/implement/support, I can certainly understand the many arguments against it. There is a fine balance. That said, here is a list of some of the applications I use on a daily basis that I believe have a wonderful place in the world of technology.

FireFox
Internet Explorer alternative
Web Browser. Far more "standards" compliant then IE (which is a plus for a any web developer) and utilizes an amazing plug-in architecture that allows anyone to create new functionality very quickly.

OpenOffice
Microsoft Office alternative
Document, Spreadsheet, Presentation editor(s). I cannot express in words my hatred for MS Office (mostly Outlook). This one is a no brainer for me and you can even open/save documents in MS Office format for all those professional users out there who have no choice!

VLC
Windows Media Player alternative
Media player that can handle almost anything you throw at it without the need of annoying "codec packs".

Handbrake
Video conversion utility. I use it mostly to convert DVDs and TV shows to iPod compatible format so I can catch up while I travel.

GIMP
Adobe Photoshop alternative
Image editing software. Not as feature rich as Photoshop, but if you are like me, you use about 0.001% of the functionality of Photoshop anyway.

uTorrent
Torrent Management. By far the most feature rich torrent software I have found. Right now I use it mostly to download TV shows that I miss. Hopefully, someday, more commercial entities will use the torrent idea in practice (Windows 7 Beta?).

mRemote
Remote Desktop Connection alternative
Remote control viewer that puts all open windows in a tabbed interface and saves the connection information. It does far more, like connect using different protocols (Citrix, VNC, etc...), but mostly I just want the tabs. This software may be going commercial very soon, I am not sure. It's a shame.

Digsby
MSN Messenger, AOL, ICQ, etc... alternative
A multi-protocol IM client. If you are like me, you have accounts with all the big guys (ICQ, MSN, AOL, Yahoo, GTalk, etc...). This allows you to communicate with all of them in one tidy window. Also connects to Facebook, MySpace, etc... Really a great piece of software.

Filezilla
FTP client software that allows you to save connections, establish secure FTP connections, resume interupted downloads, etc, etc, etc... The gold standard in FTP clients these days.

** I am just going to throw out there that a lot of the applications I discuss above are "donationware" meaning that they are free, but accept donations to help with the high cost of writing and maintaining software. If you can afford to give anything at all to the creators of Open Source software that you love, anything will help. Please support these developers!