The Open Source movement has always been present. Whether proprietary software seems to be gaining ground or not, open source has always been a very enticing alternative. The problem has been, how do people know whether an open source alternative exists or not? Here’s two websites that hope to change that.
If a user is sick and tired of some of the flaws of, say, Internet Explorer and they want to turn to an Open Source solution, the easy goto browser for surfing is FireFox hands down. In fact, FireFox does have what very few open source solutions have – a household name that most know about. Chances are, someone who knows someone who knows someone at the very least either knows or uses the famed browser. What about alternatives to, say, AutoCAD or Adobe Illustrator? That might be a bit more difficult to find.
Wouldn’t it make sense to have a website devoted specifically to having a directory of well known proprietary software and list all the open source alternatives? Actually, there are a handful of sites that do that sort of thing.
Open Source as Alternative or OSALT.com is one of those websites. You can simply type in their search bar something like Adobe Illustrator, then browse a list that appears to have some of the latest Adobe products, click on the software you are looking for, scroll past the description and you can have a short list of open source projects that is similar to the software you are looking for. For this example, we were able to find InkScape which appears, based on the description, to be a nice vector editing software that is open source and a potential alternative to Adobe illustrator. The page contains a right hand bar with a link directly to the Inkscape home page. It seems to be quite a handy website for those who are hoping to switch to open source.
Another website that tries to fit the bill for an open source alternative directory is Downloadpedia’s Open Source Alternative to Commercial Software page. Fittingly, it’s in a Wiki format which allows users to contribute to the site. It probably needs some help given how huge the page in question is, but one can simply use their browser to quickly search through the page. In FireFox, one can click on Edit, then Find and type in on that website, say, “AutoCAD”. The page points to two pieces of software and links directly to their home pages. One of those is BRL-CAD.
One of the problems with open source software like this is that design schools tend to teach the proprietary software rather than the free versions. This can mean that users who want to get over the learning curve of either choice either have instructor help with proprietary software or face their problems more or less on their own with the open source solutions. When it comes to open source and facing the problems on ones own, users aren’t actually on their own. YouTube have hundreds of thousands of tutorials on different pieces of software and open source is no exception.
Simply go to YouTube and, going back to the first example of InkScape, type in YouTube’s search for Inkscape tutorial. This specific example reveals a number of tutorials on the software in question.
Open Source provides an excellent opportunity for students because basic terms, in design for example, never change. A stroke will always be a stroke, measurements will be in picas, pixels, inches, etc. and layers will be layers. If one were to think about signing up for a program, even if they were to be learning Adobe Illustrator for example, learning the open source alternative even if it is for general purposes will really help understand fundamental principles in a given design project. The interface will no doubt be different and there will still be that learning curve, but that curve will more than likely shrink when one knows about the general ideas of design through learning the open source software.
There’s always the classic arguments for businesses to switch to open source alternatives such as it cuts down significantly on overhead costs. How much does it cost to upgrade over 100 machines to the latest software and properly license it? Wouldn’t it be great if it was possible to remove that cost? It certainly wouldn’t be very possible for the BSA to be coming after a given business for using legally free software.
Of course, such changes would never happen overnight – if at all. Still, that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t be aware of alternatives in the first place and it’s great that there are resources out there that will point a user in the right direction should that user choose to give open source a try.
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I know about OSALT but not Downloadpedia. So great thanks to Drew.
Way ahead of you, I’ve been using OSAlt for a long time now. Not only does it give you alternatives, but it only gives you legitimate ones, not the garbage software that never got finished. It has saved me a lot of time, otherwise I kept having to wade through all the programs to see which ones did what I wanted, and of those which ones I would actually want to use.
Ah, well, I figured I wasn’t breaking any new ground here, but thought I’d post the story up anyway in case others might not have known about this.
Nice to know that others approve of the site too though.
great well done thx