The open source community has a saying to distinguish “free stuff” from freedom. They say, “Free as in beer.” The point here is that there are two different types of free software. With one type, the end user is free to modify the source code, free to redistribute the software, and free to use it how they wish. Of course there are a few caveats, but the previous sentence is 99.9% true. This type of software is also free of charge.
The second type of software is just free of charge (free as in beer, not freedom). There are usually some strings attached.
I just love free stuff. I appreciate the principles of the first type of free softwre. I have donated to open source projects to “give back”. But when it really comes down to it, I love free products that help me become more productive, no matter if they are type 1 or 2. I love free beer.
I stumbled across a great book that listed 140 free development tools called Windows Developer Power Tools. You can click on that link, and buy the book from Amazon. It will put a few cents in my back pocket via the Amazon Affiliate program. Or if you just want the free tools they list and some updates, you can visit the authors’ website. Of course the site does not have the explanations of the products and sample code from the book. I have started using several of the tools found in the book, and there are several tools that I was already using.
. You can click on that link, and buy the book from Amazon. It will put a few cents in my back pocket via the Amazon Affiliate program. Or if you just want the free tools they list and some updates, you can This highlights that its not just about having great, free products available, but its about being able to find them. In the spirit of sharing, here are a few of my favorite free products, open source or not. I am sure a lot of these are obvious, but I am still going to list them:
Software Development
Visual Studio Express
Free Version of Visual Studio 2008. If you want to learn C# but you don’t want to shell out for pay versions, this is a good choice. It is also a good choice if you don’t need a lot of the advanced features of Visual Studio.
Sharp Develop
An Open Source IDE of C#. I used this for a while at home just to see if it was worth it. At the time I used it it was not, but I have noticed a lot of new features in the product since then I think you are better sticking with the free version of Visual Studio. But if you want to do C# and stay clear of MS, this is your choice.
Reflector
Inspects .Net Assemblies and Disassembles Code into C#. It is nice to see how Microsoft actually implements many of their framework classes. This has helped me countless times. When I am working with new products, I use this almost hourly.
NUnit
An automated unit testing framework for .Net. If you are not unit testing, you should be!
TestDriven.Net
Effortlessly run unit tests from inside the Visual Studio IDE.
Paint.Net
The free and fully featured painting program, written in .Net.
Various
Open Office Free office software.
Neo Office Open Office for the Mac
