MetaFilter posts tagged with software and free

A Long, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Free Software

Monday, stony Monday — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:00:07 -0800

In Two Bits (full-book in html) , Christopher M. Kelty investigates the history and cultural significance of Free Software, revealing the people and practices that have transformed not only software, but also music, film, science, and education. The author encourage his readers to modulate the book. Sadly, Two Bits has not been endorsed by Richard Stallman. There have been reviews, notably in MIT's Technology Review and Inside Higher Ed. It also has provoked interesting reactions from readers, including this story about the early Korean Internet, and this (title-inspiring) comment from Thomas Lord. [via LtU]

Buying a scalpel set doesn't make you a surgeon, but...

cthuljew — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:03:33 -0800

Not all of us need, or want, $10,000 worth of Adobe and Microsoft software to be creative. So, here's some alternatives, each available on every major platform:

GIMP, for all your drawing and photo-editing needs. (Windows and OSX.)
Inkscape, for vector graphics creation.
Scribus, for incredibly powerful document creation.
FontForge, if you want to make your own fonts.
OpenOffice, the old standby for word processing, spreadsheets, and all those other office needs. I'm a personal fan of Inkscape for its wonderfully intuitive interface, as well as Scribus for its stylesheet-based power. I hope these links improve your productivity, instead of ruining it for the day.

Giveaway of the Day

srboisvert — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 05:03:40 -0800

Giveaway of the Day. One free complete commercial software package with free registration per day. Today it is Web Stream Recorder Pro.

Ad Supported Software

tboz — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 08:55:59 -0800

Ad Supported Software It started with email, and now it's everything from IM, maps and photo galleries. But, free network management software? Can this work?

Rebirth lives again

bigmusic — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:23:05 -0800

Modern music software, by and large, is fantastic. It lets musicians create sequences of staggering complexity at the drop of a hat, work simultaneously and easily with both MIDI and digital data, and instantly subject audio to the kind of torturous manipulation that would have taken hours, or even days, with a razorblade and tape.

But do you ever really covet software in the same way that you covet hardware? Do you regard your music program with the same affection as your Moog Rogue or Fender Strat? Can something which exists only in a computer's virtual environment inspire the same pride of ownership as, say, that small silver box called a TB303 Bassline? If it's called Rebirth, maybe it can...

And now it lives again... for free

Buy milk on the way home

riffola — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 20:49:57 -0800

Ta-Da List is 37 Signals' latest offering is free sharable to-do lists. You can keep them to yourself, share them with only specific people, or share them with the world. So now you have no excuse for forgetting to buy milk on the way home.

Creature House Expressions

bz — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 13:57:29 -0800

Microsoft is giving away a nifty piece of software. It's the beta of Expressions 3 by Creature House, something I used to use back in my Mac days but hadn't heard anything about in a long time. Apparently MS bought Creature House last year. I downloaded it (after filling out a somewhat arduous survey/profile thingy) and think it a nice drawing program. Both Mac and Win versions are posted.