Open Source Mac Applications

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The Best Open Source Mac Applications in the Known Universe

Useful, free and good enough that you'll want to pay the developers for the right to use them. I only list things that I actually use and that are actually open source and that actually work the way god intended. And I'll describe each one a bit in case you don't have a clue what they are.

Blessings.

FTP
BitTorrent
Get a Mac

more...

What Is Open Source?

· from the pages of Wikipedia

Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials?typically, their source code. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology. Before the term open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; open source gained hold with the rise of a public, worldwide, computer-network system called the Internet, and the attendant need for massive retooling of the computing source code. Opening the source code enabled a self-enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.

The complexity of such communication relates to Brooks' law, and it is also described by Eric S. Raymond, "Brooks predicts that as your number of programmers N rises, work performed scales as N but complexity and vulnerability to bugs rises as N-squared. N-squared tracks the number of communications paths (and potential code interfaces) between developers' code bases." ?"The Revenge of the Hackers". 2000.

Subsequently, a new, three-word phrase "open source software" was born to describe the environment that the new copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues created.

The open source model includes the concept of concurrent yet different agendas and differing approaches in production, in contrast with more centralized models of development such as those typically used in commercial software companies.

Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. ed 3.0. 2000.

A main principle and practice of open source software development is peer production by bartering and collaboration, with the end-product (and source-material) available at no cost to the public. This is increasingly being applied in other fields of endeavor, such as biotechnology."Science 2.0 is here as CSIR resorts to open source drug research for TB" Business Standard, 1 March 2009

read the rest of the Wikipedia article

Browse the Web

Firefox: If you don't know about firefox by now, there may be no helping you. (Just kidding. I know perfectly well that there are a number of people who don't know about firefox. At least six or seven of you.) I've recently switched my default browser to firefox, because the lastest version frankly kicks Safari in the booty. Of course, I still need Safari every once in a bluish moon. And I also use Camino. (Sigh.) Will there ever be a time when I just need one browser? I kind of doubt it.
Camino: For a long time this was the most mac-like open-source browser available, and it was speedier than firefox (a little more streamlines, a little less bloated). But with the latest versions of firefox, this simply isn't as true as it used to be. But this is still a handy little browser to have around, and I'd recommend it for anyone who just plain old finds firefox to be too darn much (and who is having trouble with safari, which just happens once in awhile... you try to access a site with special features, and one of the darn browsers chokes, so you try a different one, and presto, no choking at all).

DVD Ripping

Handbrake: So, you've got a video iPod and you want to get a few movies from your collection onto it to take with you on the airplane to Denver... how do you do it? You have to rip them. And handbrake is the simplest, most robust of the ripping utilities for Mac I've ever seen. And it's open source. So, install it, select the kind of device you're ripping for, select the disc you want to rip, and let it work. (It's gone multi-speedy in its latest versions, so if you have a decently updated mac, you get a ripped file in less time than it takes to watch the movie, which was not always the case). Good, quality tool.

FTP

Open Source FTP Software for the Mac

CyberDuck: I've paid money for commercial ftp software that wasn't as robust as cyberduck. And I'll be paing money for cyberduck some day soon (I promise) because it's frankly one of the best ftp utilities I've used, and it includes WebDAV and SFTP compatibility. No extra charge.

BitTorrent

Open Source BitTorrent Software for Mac OS X

Transmission: Outstanding, robust, fast, easy, handy, cool bittorrent client. Does what a bittorent client should do. And does it with style.