Looking for Free Software? A New Directory Can Help

29.09.2011
There are free and alternatives to just about every proprietary software package available today--the trick is just finding the right ones for your business.

Luckily, fresh help is now on hand in the form of the Free Software Foundation's new , which was officially re-launched today.

Since its inception almost a decade ago, "the directory has been one of our most popular and important resources," said John Sullivan, executive director of the Free Software Foundation. "But with so much free software being written and shared now, we wanted to update the technology we use for the site so that contributors can participate in examining and posting new entries, and users can more easily search them."

Thousands of Programs

More than 6500 programs are now listed in the newly updated directory, all of them free for any computer user to download, run and share. Each entry is individually checked and tested, the FSF says, so users know that any program they come across in the directory will be truly free software, according to the group's , with free documentation and without proprietary software requirements.

Programs that run on proprietary operating systems like Mac OS X and Windows are listed as well, but only if they run fully on GNU/Linux.