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Harold Mansfield
04-16-2018, 10:32 AM
Starting a business is expensive. Many people don't account for the cost of all the tools and software needed to run a daily operation or how easy it is to get nickle and dimed to death.

I'm compiling a list of some of my favorite free or open source tools that I use or have used over the years that have worked just fine and saved me money over purchasing or subscribing to more expensive options. Suggestions are welcomed.

Free software

Free software is software that comes with permission for anyone to use, copy and distribute, either verbatim or with modifications, either gratis or for a fee.

Open source software

Open source software is software with its source code made available under a certain license to its licensees. It can be used and disseminated at any point, the source code is open and can be modified as required. The Linux operating system is one of the best known examples of a collection of open source software.


Accounting & Finance
GnuCash (https://www.gnucash.org/) - Personal and small-business financial-accounting software.
InvoicePlane (https://invoiceplane.com/) - A self-hosted open source application for managing your quotes, invoices, clients and payments.
Simple Invoice (http://www.simpleinvoices.org/) - Web based invoicing developed by the community, for the community.

Design & Development
Blender (https://www.blender.org/download/)- Free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation.
FreeCAD (https://www.freecadweb.org/)- Open source 3D CAD software.
GIMP (https://www.gimp.org/) - Image editor available for GNU/Linux, OS X, Windows and more operating systems.
Inkscape (https://inkscape.org/en/) - Open-source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, or Xara X.
LibreCad (http://librecad.org/cms/home.html) - Open source 2D CAD software.
Scribus (https://www.scribus.net/)- A page layout program for Linux, FreeBSD, PC-BSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, OpenIndiana, Debian GNU/Hurd, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp 4, eComStation, Haiku and Windows. S

Operating Systems

Productivity
Google Docs (https://www.google.com/docs/about/) - Productivity suite which included Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Forms, & Google Slides
Open Office (https://www.openoffice.org/) -Free and open productivity suite from the Apache Software Foundation. Compatible with MS Office.

Security
Let's Encrypt (Free SSL./TLS) (https://letsencrypt.org/) - Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority (CA), run for the public’s benefit.

Fulcrum
04-16-2018, 06:01 PM
I've got:

OpenOffice - Open source software similar to Microsoft Works
LibreCad - Open source 2D CAD software
FreeCAD - Open source 3D CAD software

turboguy
04-17-2018, 08:57 AM
As far as 2D Cad software I have been using Draftsight which is free and created by Dassult systems who also have SolidWorks which is the most widely used 3D program for parts modeling. SolidWorks of course is not free and quite expensive but DraftSight is basically an AutoCad clone and is pretty full featured. We also use Hi-Cad which is also free but pretty basic. We need it to design parts we use in our computer run plasma table since Draftsite doesn't support the somewhat uncommon file format our plasma table need. I do really like Draftsight and recommend it to anyone.

Another little freebie is that I just had to create a bowling alley web site for a friend and wanted a one page Parallax site. One of the tutorials I looked at on you tube titled something like "make a Parallax website free 2018' by NYCTechClub has permission to let users download a premium theme that would normally be $ 60.00 or so. The tutorial is one of the best I have seen and since it lets you download a theme that would normally be $ 60.00 I think it fits the topic here. The Theme has a lot of cool features such as layered, animated slides, the ability to add about 50 transitions to any section, a good page builder and about 12 pre-built templates.

Harold Mansfield
04-17-2018, 10:29 AM
Cool. I'll start putting together a list of stuff soon. Keep 'em coming.

fossfolks
02-13-2020, 05:36 PM
I'd add to this list Riot and Telegram (sort of like Hangouts/WhatsApp, but open source), and Mattermost (an open source and HIPAA-compliant Slack alternative). Atom and Geany are both great text editors. I use both because I've got likes and dislikes with each. Audacity is good for editing audio. Ardour is great too (but that's maybe a bit of overkill, unless you're doing multitrack recording).

meichner
03-17-2020, 07:05 PM
Airtable (https://airtable.com/templates) - Great solution that combines spreadsheets with databases to organize work projects
Notion (https://www.notion.so) - A very powerful solution, a cross between a wiki, spreadsheet tables, and project management tasks list
Loom (https://www.loom.com) - Send a personalized Loom video rather than typing long status emails
Digitile (https://digitile.io/) - One place to search, tag and share files scattered across Gmail, GDrive, Dropbox, Trello and so on