The best free open source software for Windows
If you run Microsoft Windows, you owe it to yourself to try these 10 killer open source apps -- InfoWorld's top picks
Expand your horizons with Mozilla Firefox
Like OpenOffice.org, Firefox is another tool that's almost synonymous with free open source. It’s also the movement’s greatest success story, with more than 30 percent of Web surfers running some version of the Firefox browser. The story is all the more remarkable when you consider that Microsoft effectively owned this category just a few short years ago, having captured 90 percent of Internet users by bundling the Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system.
Although Firefox is free, unlike Internet Explorer it doesn't just fall into your lap; you need to consciously seek out, download, and install it -- all tasks that have traditionally been beyond the pale for average users. That Mozilla.org has been able to reach past this kind of inertia and convince such a wide audience to try Firefox is testimony both to the product’s quality and to the power of public perception: All the cool, savvy users seem to run Firefox, while Internet Explorer is now considered the choice of newbies and the unsophisticated.
It also helps that Firefox is a darn good browser, chock-full of useful features and thoughtful touches, like one-touch bookmarking and an integrated search and address field (aka the "awesome bar"). And if there’s something you don’t like about Firefox or a feature you think is missing, chances are the need has already been addressed by one of the program’s 6,000 or more add-ons.
In fact, it’s this active add-on community that makes Firefox so attractive to the tuners and tweakers of the global IT audience. Firefox truly is whatever you make it, and for many users, this is just the kind of customizability that’s worth seeking out.
Bottom line: Firefox is the standard bearer of the free open source movement and a shining example of what a community-oriented development process can achieve.
