Open Source Software That We Love
Open source software is a great way to help you run your business more efficiently and gain bigger profits. They are perfect for all sorts of tasks, whether it’s managing your passwords, editing audio, and photos. While businesses usually benefit a lot from it, everyone, including individual home users, can find them very useful.
In this article, we will be talking about some of the best open source software we love. So without any further delay, let’s begin:
LibreOffice
LibreOffice is an amazing open source software that works as a great alternative to Microsoft Office. The software supports all kinds of documents, databases, diagrams, presentations, spreadsheets, and even mathematical formulae. It is basically a free version of MS Office 365.
With its amazing tools and regular updates, many people believe that LibreOffice is a better option compared to MS Office. During one of its recent updates, the software added a special QR code generator tool that allows you to easily create mobile-friendly links.
GIMP
Originally released in 1996, GIMP is one of the most popular and well-maintained open source software you will find. It is probably the only software that can give you a similar experience to Adobe Photoshop for free. What makes this photo editing software special is that it offers automatic photo enhancement, filters, and even layers, just like Photoshop. You can even download plug-ins to create your own graphic design.
The only downside to this software is that it can be hard to learn for beginners. But just like Photoshop, if you are willing to put in some time, you will definitely love the interface and tools.
VLC Media Player
If you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about VLC Media Player or even used it as well. While most people use this software, a huge percentage do not know that it is actually open-source software. The great thing about this amazing software is that it can play just about anything.
You can use this software to play video and audio files in any format without having to download codecs every time you try to play a new file. Like just about every other top open source software, VLC media player is also regularly upgraded, and new features are added almost all the time.
What you might not know is that VLC works with streaming media like radio stations and podcasts. So, if you’re looking for good open source software to play your media files, VLC Media Player will easily be a great choice.
Brave
Brave is perhaps one of the best browsers that you will currently find. And the best thing is that you can download it for both computers and websites. So, what is Brave all about? Brave is a fairly new software that is recently getting a lot of attention thanks to its ability to block ads and disable website trackers. It offers an extremely secure browsing experience unlike any other.
One of the main advantages of Brave is that it allows you to have access to most of Chrome’s extensions. But besides that, you also enjoy a faster browsing experience with Brave since there are no ads.
Shotcut
Shotcut is open source software we love, thanks to its amazing video editing capabilities. In the early stages of development, Shotcut wasn’t all that perfect, with a lot of room for improvement. However, with later releases, there have been many upgrades, such as an intuitive timeline and extra dockable panels, which have made the app so much better.
What makes this free video editing software special is that it supports non-destructive video editing. This means that you can edit audio and videos without losing any of the quality.
But that’s not all; the best thing about this software is that it allows you to work with just about any format of audio, video, or photo file. And for that, you can thank FFmpeg, which is an open source video framework that works under the Shotcut software.
With that, we come to the end of this article. There’s no doubt that there are hundreds of other amazing open source software out there. However, this five software are the ones we love the most due to their reliability and usability.…
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WHAT IS OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE?
Open source is something that is made publicly accessible to everyone. Open source software is a software that is programmed by a specific organization which is built in such a way that anyone can inspect, modify and enhance it. Open source software, abbreviated as OSS, has to follow certain criteria such as:
- It must be freely distributed.
- External users must be allowed to modify the code and this modified code must be allowed to redistribute.
- Source code must be included within the program.
Today, OSS embraces and celebrates the initiative of open exchange of code, rapid prototyping, community oriented development and transparency within the software development environment.
There are two types of formats for an open source: compiled and non-compiled. It allows a huge area of software development for all, whereas in a traditional software, these services are restricted to copyright holders. Another advantage is that it enables quicker software repairs and lead to higher quality applications.
Advantages of OSS are:
- Software redistribution
- Source code integrity and availability
- Distribution of licenses
- Anti-discrimination
- Code can be easily improved and tested
- Gives an opportunity for developers or beginners to improve their programming skills
- It is more secure than any other proprietary one as any bug if present, can be immediately found and fixed
- It can be very helpful to analyze long term projects since these kinds of software are subjected to changes all around the world and the project developers can clearly see the different modern approaches and implement their project accordingly.
There are different licenses provided to these softwares. They are:
- MIT license
- GNU GPL 2.0
- GNU GPL 3.0
- Apache License 3.0
- BSD License 3.0
Commercial software cannot be open source since the entire software is copyrights reserved and is intended only for that organization alone and cannot be modified or changed by any other third party.
Today everyone having access to the internet can get benefitted of open source. Nowadays whenever we deal with any gadgets such as mobile phones, laptops, emails, other useful softwares in our system, everything is connected over a global network that is managed by a class of open source softwares. Nowadays system can be accessed from anywhere by using the concept of remote computers. In order to store so much data, cloud computing is the most emerging paradigm that is used. Cloud computing has a vast amount of services that are also made as open source. Examples include NextCloud, owncloud etc.
Open source software is given more preference due to following reasons like: control, security, training and stability.
One important point to be noted is that not all open source softwares are charged for free. Few open source softwares are chargeable. Again, it depends on the software owner. Few of the softwares are charged only for their licensing. Few are charged for the overall infrastructure, services and license. Few are absolutely free. Open source software provides a means of collaborating ideas of different individuals, sharing ideas, transparency and encouraging different people to code and develop a better software altogether. …
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