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While OStatic is dedicated to open source, one of the big attractions with open source applications for many users is that they're free. That's why when we see really outstanding freeware applications--even though they're not open source--we still call them out. In this post, I'll discuss four really outstanding freeware options. Windows and Mac users will find tools to like here, and the price is right.

The Audacity audio editor is a great program. Take that as you will: It's truly functional software. It's a great illustration of the power and versatility of open source. Audacity has been an active project for some time. But because it provides an esoteric service, it was only recently I had reason to sit down and use it.

Mozilla Labs recently offered a sneak peak and download of Geode. Geode is one of the first applications to use the new W3C geolocation specification API. It is currently available as a plug-in for Firefox 3 (and seems to only support Windows and Mac systems at this time). Mozilla Labs indicates it will likely be a new feature integrated in an upcoming browser release.

Dana Blankenhorn makes some good points in a post from today titled Open Source in a Time of Recession. One of the better points is that, despite the incredible turmoil in global markets and economies, we actually haven't met the official definition of a recession yet here in the U.S., which would be two consecutive quarters without economic growth. Nevertheless, the financial gloom and doom we're seeing will cause constricted business spending on software, and open source stands to benefit from that in several ways. There may also be some unexpected events in the works.

People often think of open source as being purely a Linux and BSD thing. Perhaps they're aware of open source on OS X as well, but in general Windows is seen as hostile to open source. And at the heart of the hostility surely must be Microsoft's proprietary .NET framework, right? But no: the Mono Project provides a cross-platform, open source implementation of .NET. Version 2.0 was re

Open source mobile messaging vendor Funambol plans to add micro-banner ads to its online portal myFUNAMBOL. Calling the ads "prominent yet non-intrusive," Funambol representatives say the new advertisements will display in several areas of the email client, including the inbox and message viewing screens. Company CEO Fabrizio Capobianco, says the move "will unleash a major revenue opportunity for service providers, portals and mobile operators." What's in it for myFUNAMBOL customers? Plenty.

Laptop Magazine talked to MSI's Director of US Sales, Andy Tung about the future of netbooks. Tung discussed future netbook sales and releases -- and presented the statistic that Linux-based netbooks are four times more likely to be returned. jkOnTheRun reasons that this isn't terribly surprising. Considering the low price of Linux netbooks, and their rarity at larger retailers that might allow new users to "kick the tires," it seems that many new users leap, then look.

Dojo, one of the leading open-source libraries and widget sets for JavaScript programming, released its latest version (1.2) yesterday. Dojo, which is developed by the Dojo Foundation and released under both the BSD License and Academic Free License, is officially integrated with a number of Web development frameworks, such as Django and the Zend Framework, and by vendors such as IBM and Sun Microsystems.

I recently got the chance to talk with Gentoo Catalyst/Genkernel Release Engineering Lead Andrew Gaffney and developer/council member Donnie Berkholz about Gentoo Linux, the challenges it is facing, and the work that is being done by the community -- from veteran developers to new users -- to overcome them.

Berdou examined parallels and disconnects between paid and volunteer contributors in the GNOME and KDE projects, using earlier incidents of such events (such as the Gstreamer/Fluendo SL summit). The hypotheses and analysis she presents are thought-provoking.

Joe Brockmeier has an interesting piece up on the differences between paid and volunteer open source contributors. In it, he cites this post from former Debian Project Leader Martin Michlmayr, and a paper by Evangelia Berdou. "Berdou finds that paid developers take up key positions in projects, while volunteers often work on the periphery." I agree with Joe that the combination of these two types of contributions can be very powerful.

Sun Microsystems has been steadily shifting its business strategy toward open source for quite a while now. From delivering OpenSolaris, to pushing ahead with MySQL, to virtualization efforts, open source is driving many parts of Sun's business. We caught up with Rich Green, executive vice president of software at Sun, to ask him about what benefits the company is seeing, and what lies ahead.

we're always interested in efforts to apply open source principles to efforts outside the software realm. Drew Endy, an open source biologist currently working at Stanford, is a good example of why. Along with several researchers at MIT, Endy is working on synthetic biology and the engineering of standardized biological components and devices, known as BioBricks.

If the fact that the ParanoidLinux distribution (now in an "alpha-alpha stage") is based on a work of science fiction isn't unsettling, consider two key peripheral issues. The first unsettling issue is that in some censorship-centric areas of the world, an operating system granting a user anonymity could be literally life-saving.

Yahoo announced yesterday that it was releasing version 2.6 of its popular Yahoo User Interface (YUI) library, a collection of JavaScript objects and functions for client-side Web programming. YUI, distributed under the BSD license, is similar to such open-source JavaScript libraries as jQuery (see related story), Dojo, and Prototype/Scriptaculous. Note that this release is not the same as YUI 3.0, a preview of which was released earlier this year, and which will not be backward compatible with version 2.x.

Have you ever typed about:config into Firefox's address bar? If you do, you'll get back a huge array of files that you can modify to configure and customize your Firefox installation. Some people like to play with these. I don't like to, and that's why I'm a big fan of FireTune. FireTune is a free, downloadable utility that automates the process of improving your Firefox setup.

Today Linux Magazine, the Linux Foundation, and CeBIT organizers announced that they are taking applications for a limited number of free booths at the CeBIT 2009 conference. The global IT tradeshow, taking place March 3-8, 2009, in Hannover, Germany, will focus on open source software as a central theme for the first time.

After much teeth-gnashing from the developer community, Apple has finally dropped its draconian and restrictive non-disclosure agreement (NDA) on the iPhone software development kit (SDK). In the seven months since the SDK showed up, Apple has taken much heat from developers and iPhone users alike over its lack of platfrom openness. The platform still isn't open, but it is a step in the right direction for Apple to eliminate this NDA. Here's what this means for the open source phones that will be competing with the iPhone.

We've written about GIMP, the outstanding open source graphics program originally developed at U.C. Berkeley, several times before. The application has had a robust community of developers behind it for years, and now a new version 2.6 is downloadable. Here's what's under the hood in the update, including a whole slew of interface enhancements.

A few years ago I stumbled upon the efforts of the Victoria Linux Users Group. They are an active, involved group, but not particularly unlike any other LUG. I was pointed in the direction of their Linux in Victoria brochure. Yes, its date of publication was 1997. What makes this brochure different is that it is open. Perhaps this is less impressive in light of the advent of wikis, but the purpose and intent of the brochure is still remarkable, and well worth expanding upon.