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Great software that you don’t have to pay for.

On Wednesday, we published a very useful, but admittedly incomplete list of Open Source software for PCs running Windows. Today, we have the list for Macintosh users.

Here are a few of our favorite Open Source applications for Max OS X - most of which we use on a regular basis. We’ll list some our favorite free applications for Windows and Macs in later posts. In the near future, we’ll go in these great apps a little more in-depth, one at a time.

In the meantime, download the ones that interest you and start using them. If you have any reservations about learning about how they work, visit HowDoIDoThatVideos.com and see if there is video for the software. If there isn’t now, there very likely will be in the near future.

Web Browsers

If you’re not using Firefox, the Open Source web browser from Mozilla.org, you are missing out on some of the best the web has to offer. Faster and more standards compliant than Internet Explorer, extensible with add-ons that allow you to surf the net safer and easier, themes that allow your Firefox to look like you want it, and much more. Use more than one computer. There is a Firefox plugin that keeps your Bookmarks in sync on two or more computers, even if you have a mix of PCs, Macs and Linux boxes. Get Firefox here.

Camino is an open source web browser developed with a focus on providing the best possible experience for Mac OS X users. The Camino web browser is powerful, secure, and ready to meet the needs of all users while remaining simple and elegant in its design. Camino combines the awesome visual and behavioral experience that has been central to the Macintosh philosophy with the powerful web-browsing capabilities of the Gecko rendering engine. Get Camino here.

Sea Monkey - Web-browser, advanced e-mail and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and HTML editing made simple — all your Internet needs in one application. Get the Sea Monkey suite here.

Email

Thunderbird from Mozilla.org is an extensible Open Source desktop email client that is at home on PCs, Macs and Linux alike. Just like web browser Firefox, Thunderbird has a ton of plugins and themes so you can get it to look like you want and do what you want. Pick up and send mail from multiple email accounts, set up signatures for each of your mailboxes, and much more. Like all Open Source software, Thunderbird is free for you to download and use. Get Thunderbird here.

Calendar

One more Mozilla product before we move on. If you have a need for a desktop calendar program (and who doesn’t?), you might want to give Mozilla Sunbird a try. Set appointments and alarms, get help remembering birthdays, anniversaries and other important dates. Schedule your days and weeks. Set reminders about dates far in the future. Then publish the calendars you choose to the web in standard iCal format. There’s even a 3rd party PHP application that can handle that for you. Get Sunbird here.

Office Applications

NeoOffice is the Mac OS X-native port of OpenOffice. NeoOffice can do anything that Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access can do. But it can do more. And it’s much easier on our wallet. NeoOffice is a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X. Based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, NeoOffice has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office. Get NeoOffice here.

AbiWord 2.6.3 is an award winning, small, fast, full-featured and cross-platform word processor. Get your copy today to experience the state of the art in word processing. Light weight, easy to use and it can read and write MS Word and Open Doc files. Get AbiWord here.

Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor (or more precisely, a rich text editor), designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. Bean is Open Source, fully Cocoa, and is available free of charge! MS Word, OpenOffice, etc. try to be all things to all people. But sometimes you just want the right tool for the job. That is Bean’s niche. Bean is not a replacement for MS Word. It does not do footnotes and is only partially compatible with the various Word formats (more here). Get Bean here.

Image Processing

Seashore is an open source image editor for Mac OS X’s Cocoa framework. It runs natively in Mac OS X - it does NOT require X-11. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It supports multiple layers and alpha channel editing. It is based around the GIMP’s technology and uses the same native file format. However, unlike the GIMP, Seashore only aims to serve the basic image editing needs of most computer users, not to provide a replacement for professional image editing products. Seashore was created by Mark Pazolli who, together with a handful of other developers and helpful users, still develops it to this day. I have used it for basic image processing jobs like resizing images and adjusting color and it worked just fine. Get Seashore here.

Ever had a need for PhotoShop but couldn’t justify the expense of buying it. If so, you owe it to ourself to take a good look at theGIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP can do most of the things that PhotoShop can do and it’s Open Source so anyone can download and use it. There are hundreds of plugins and extensions developed by theGIMP Community. TheGIMP can read and write PhotoShop PSD files as well handle images in it’s native XCF format. As I write this, running theGIMP on a Mac requires the use of the X-11 system extension which is not very Mac-like. You can install X-11 from your OS X installation disks. An OS X-native version of theGIMP is in the works, but no date has been set for it’s release to the general public. Get theGIMP here.

Video

Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats.
Perian enables QuickTime application support for additional Media Types:
• MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivX, H.264, FLV1, FSV1, VP6, H263I, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), MPEG Layer II Audio
• AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
• Subtitle support for SSA and SRT
Get Perian here.

VLC Media Player (formerly VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, etc.) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. I have used it to play AVI files that have audio or video problems when played in QuickTime even with the Perian plugin. Get VLC here.

Audio Processing

Record, edit and output audio files in all of the popular formats including MP3, WAV, AIFF and Ogg Vorbis. Convert your records and tapes into digital recording and put them on CDs. Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds. Audacity is cross-platform and top-quality. Get Audacity here.

HTML and Text Editing

KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding. KompoZer has built-in FTP and site management capability. Get KompoZer here.

Smultron is a free text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 which is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to neither confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users. It should work perfectly for a whole variety of needs - like web programming, script editing, making a to do list and so on. Versins are also available for OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.3.9. Get Smultron here.

FTP Client

Open Source and cross-platform, we use this program all the time. It is fast and has a logical side-by-side interface. FileZilla supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). It supports resume and transfer of large files. Site Manager, drag-and-drop and remote file editing are just a few more of it’s features. Get FileZilla here.

Cyberduck is an open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV and Amazon S3 browser licenced under the GPL with an easy to use interface, integration with external editors and support for many Mac OS X system technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour, QuickLook and the Keychain. Very easy to use “drag-and-drop” interface. Get Cyberduck here.

RSS Client

Applications that collect data from RSS-compliant sites are called RSS readers or “aggregators.” RSSOwl is such an application. RSSOwl lets you gather, organize, update, and store information from any compliant source in a convenient, easy to use interface, save selected information in various formats for offline viewing and sharing, and much more. It’s easy to configure, available in many many languages and the best of all: It’s platform-independent. Get RRS Owl here.

File Utility

Very simple to use and install - simply copy it into your Applications folder or whereever you prefer, and then set archive filetypes to open using it. This can either be done the usual way, or by double-clicking the icon to show The Unarchiver’s preferences. Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other more or less obscure formats. Support for so many formats is achieved by using the libxad unarchiving library. Get Unarchiver here.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of Open Source software for the Mac platform. These are programs I’ve used and feel comfortable recommending. We’ll be reviewing more software as time allows. A more complete list of Mac Open Source software is available at: OpenSourceWindows.org

FreeSMUG is the Macintosh Free Software Mac User Group. There’s a whole lot of info on free software for the Mac including update news on Open Source software. FreeSMUG holds events around the world and live streaming video of the events is available at the FreeSMUG website.