Take for instance Open Office. Open Office is a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, which costs hundreds of dollars! It reads and writes to Microsoft Office formats, so you can still use it for all of your school projects.It has an excel-like program, as well as a Powerpoint clone and works pretty much the same as Microsoft office with the exception of certain menus and other things. However, for everyday use, it works just fine.

However, the free open-source software movement doesn’t stop with mere office programs that really aren’t that much fun. If you are an artist, or digital photo enthusiast, you may want to look into The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Project). The GIMP is basically a free, open-source version of the $400-600 Adobe Photoshop.

Using The GIMP you can cut and crop photos, apply effects and do more professional touch-ups to your photos and images. Or, if you want, you can make it look like you have a Saintly halo around your head, then you can print out the photo and say to your parents that they are wrong and that you are indeed a Saint!

A third example of a great free program is Blender. If you want to go into game design or computer animation, this may be the program for you! Blender is a free, open-source 3-d modeling program that can be used for anything from designing buildings, to creating game characters, and even to make animated movies such as Elephant’s Dream and the soon-to-be-released Big Buck Bunny (May 2008). The software is very complicated but, if you know to use it, it becomes very powerful. Commercial 3-D programs generally cost in the THOUSANDS so, this is a great alternative!

You’ll notice that all of the programs discussed are open-source. This means that the programming code used to make the program is available to the public. Open-source programs are great because they are usually free, will usually work on multiple operating systems and if you are a programmer you can adjust or make improvements to the program and re-release it.

Other examples of open-source software include: Mozilla Firefox, Flock, Audacity, Electric Sheep (screensaver), Opera and many other programs out there! You can find more at http://www.opensourcewindows.org or by doing a search for open-source using your favorite search engine.

While these programs may lack some of the bells and whistles of their commercial partners and can be a little harder to learn, once you get the hang of them they are very powerful. In fact, some of these programs have plug-ins, add-ons or features that professional products charge you extra for! For example Photoshop and 3D studio Max or Lightwave charge extra for filter packs, effects and other such things, but, in the open-source community these things are created by other users free of charge, again saving you valuable time and cash.

The other great thing about these open-source options, is that they encourage creativity and gives normal people the opportunity to explore things that they couldn’t normally do legally. A lot of people will want to pursue photography or 3-D modeling and get so overwhelmed with the costs that they obtain the software illegally through file sharing software. Stealing is NEVER an encouraged behavior for any Christian. So, these programs offer a way to learn the basics in the field you are interested in, without stealing thousands of dollars worth of intellectual property from software companies like Microsoft and Adobe.

Lastly, because open-source programs are usually free, you don’t have to spend anything but your time and creativity on them. This way, you can save those couple hundred or thousand dollars for better use, like donating to my ebook reader fund!

Seriously though, God wants us to be good stewards of the money he gives us. For example, right now there is a major food crisis in many countries. Did you know that a donation of $200 to the Haitian Health Foundation can provide a year’s worth of food for an entire family!? That’s $200 that you could have spent on software but, instead you can provide a better life for those in need! There are other charities as well, not to mention the needs of the Church and your own community.

So using open-source software is a great way to support the open-source movement, allow you to create in ways that you didn’t think were possible due to costs and to save money to be placed aside for better purposes, like supporting the Church or those in need around the world. How’s that for putting your money where your faith is?

Remember, the internet is where the New Evangelization that Pope John Paul II talked about, is really flourishing! So, let’s make the best of it!

God Bless,

Chris