Free software generally is available for no money (for free), but the real issue of free software is the issue of freedom of use. Free software is distributed as source code so that the user is free to modify the program or even use parts of the code in other projects. So far I have just been a user, but I intend to contribute to the Free Software Foundation. I will submit my finished computer-music-instrument, the JoyStickMusic Machine, to the world under the GNU license.

While not a Non-Commercial Operating System, NEXTSTEP has a wealth of free, powerful software spurred by a brilliantly easy and cohesive set of application programming tools and libraries. PEAK Archives has the largest collection of this freeware. Peanuts also has a lot but its in Germany.

Little old NeXT is about to squash Microsoft's horrible GUI's. Microsoft is too wrapped up in marketing to realize that with help from Sun and GNU, the NEXTSTEP GUI will be infiltrating just about every OS (Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!). OPENSTEP will bring the NEXTSTEP GUI and API to Solaris, HP/UX, Rhapsody, Windows95, and WindowsNT. Like NEXTSTEP, OPENSTEP is not free, but since it uses the NEXTSTEP developer's apps, libraries, etc. cross-platform GUI freeware will become prevalent.

GNUstep is the best of both worlds: GNU freeware and OPENSTEP interface. GNUstep is a GNU implememntation of the OPENSTEP standard. Since it is freeware, expect it to be ported to many different platforms beyond what OPENSTEP provides.

A guy named Linus decided he wanted to make his own UNIX kernel. People all over the world joined in to help, they threw in the GNU stuff and now we have a completely free, highly competant UNIX that will run on not only any i386 type chip but also DEC Alpha, Motorola m68k with Sparc, MIPS and PowerPC in the works.

The MiscKit is an easy to install kit consisting of Objective-C objects, Interface Builder palettes, bundles, and other useful programming resources. All the resources in the MiscKit have been donated by various Internet personalities for the benefit of other NEXTSTEP programmers.

Apache started out as "A patchy" version of NCSA's HTTP server. Now it is the internet standard with about 45% of the web servers running with Apache. And of course, it is free.

Squid is a internet object cache and a proxy. It is a free and great way to speed up your network activity and reduce traffic on the network.

A wonderfuly functional example of communism at work: "Each gives to his ability; each takes to his need." Many GNU programs have become industry standards, like gzip(a compression utility) and gcc(a C, C++, and Objective-C compiler). The GNU (GNU's Not Unix) operating system based on the Hurd/GNUmach kernel, is coming together quite nicely.

The Cache Now! campaign is designed to increase the awareness and use of proxy cache on the Web. The concept is simple - when a Web page is requested, it is saved to disk. If it is required again, the disk copy is used. This technique is used in all modern browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.

"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network."
-Tim Berners-Lee

The alternate internet domain name (DN) network information center (NIC). Eugene Kashpureff, AlterNIC's main man, redirected all traffic from InterNIC and Network Solutions, Inc. (the company that takes your money to do the DN registration) for 4 days this summer in protest of InterNIC DN monopoly. AlterNIC proposes have multiple NIC's so that one organization didn't have so much control over the internet.