It respects your rights. It's cutting edge. It's free software.

Free software, popularly marketed as "open source software" is free as in "freedom" of speech, not just as in "free beer." Free software isn't owned by any one company; it's a collaborative project often worked on by many programmers, and often under constant revision.

Here are free software programs we like, but be sure to check Hampedia's list,  the Free Software Directory and osalt.com (Open Source as Alternative) for a comprehensive list.

Office / Productivity

LibreOffice alternative to MS Office
NeoOffice Mac-only alternative to MS Office

Graphics

Gimp Photo editing
ImageJ Photo editing
Paint.net Photo editing (PC Only)
Scribus Desktop Publishing

The Sciences

ChemSketch Chem Draw alternative. Not open source, but free for education.
HEC-RAS HEC-RAS allows you to perform one-dimensional steady flow, unsteady flow, sediment transport/mobile bed computations, and water temperature modeling.
R Statistical computing and graphics.
PSPP statistical analysis alternative to SPSS
Serial Cloner Light molecular biology software
4Peaks Mac OS X application for viewing and editing sequence trace files

Multimedia and Audio

Audacity audio editor and recorder
VLC flexible media player
HandBrake a DVD to MPEG-4 converter

Utilities

CDBurnerXP CD and DVD burning software (PC only)
Putty Terminal/SSH
Winscp File Transfer
Cwrsync File Transfer
Cyberduck FTP